Dallas Allergy

There have been reports in the news media about the recent FDA Panel that recommended severely limiting the use of Advair and Symbicort for asthma. This recommendation reflects no new data but, rather, was issued by a new committee of the FDA that examined data from the late 90’s. The panel of physicians were not asthma experts. We at DallasAllergyImmunology  disagree with these recommendations based on our analysis of the data evaluated by the FDA and additional, more recent information.

Advair has been studied and used for many years. There have been more than 30 million patient years of experience with Advair. Symbicort is newer to the US but has been used extensively in Europe. Serevent and Foradil have also been studied extensively. We know a lot about these drugs.

• Advair and Symbicort have been shown to be safe in many studies representing thousands of patient years of experience with these drugs. Advair alone has been studied in more than 18,000 patients.
• There were no asthma-related deaths in children receiving Serevent or Advair in clinical studies enrolling more than 7,400 children.
• Our research group has participated in many studies of asthma drugs, particularly Advair and Symbicort. Our doctors and PA’s are intimately familiar with these drugs, their side effects and benefits.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Thoracic Society, American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology, and American College of Allergy Asthma and Immunology all support the continued use of these medicines.

Because of the overwhelming data supporting the benefits of combination therapy (Advair or Symbicort) for patients with asthma and because the current information does not raise any new safety concerns about these drugs, we continue to prescribe and recommend Advair or Symbicort when appropriate for our patients.