Asthma management in pregnancy.

BACKGROUND: Asthma is common during pregnancy, however research is limited regarding the extent and timing of changes in asthma management associated with pregnancy. OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence of asthma during pregnancy and identify changes in treatment and asthma exacerbation rates associated with pregnancy, while controlling for seasonal influences. METHODS: Pregnant women with asthma were identified from the UK General Practice Research Database between 2000 and 2008. For each woman asthma medication prescribed during the study period was identified; for each product combination the British Thoracic Society medication-defined asthma treatment step was identified. Asthma exacerbations were identified during pregnancy and in the corresponding 12 months prior. Analyses of changes in asthma treatment and exacerbation rates during pregnancy relative to the corresponding period 12 months prior, to control for seasonality, were stratified by trimester and asthma treatment intensity level. RESULTS: The prevalence of treated asthma in pregnancies resulting in a delivery was 8.3%. From 14,141 pregnancies, in 12,828 women with asthma, 68.4% received prescriptions for a short-acting ß2-agonist and 41.2% for inhaled corticosteroids; 76.5% were managed with asthma treatment Step 1 or 2. Poor persistence to inhaled corticosteroids, defined as a gap of up to 60 days between prescriptions, was common. In 45.0% of pregnancies, an increase in average treatment step was observed whereas in 25.6% the treatment step decreased. Treatment intensity remained the same in 29.5% of pregnancies. Exacerbations occurred in 4.8% of pregnancies compared to 5.9% in the same season the year before (p<0.001). CONCLUSION: Exacerbation rates during pregnancy were slightly lower than in the year before. However, treatment patterns and exacerbation rates in this study suggest asthma control during pregnancy is variable, and women may require close monitoring especially in those with evidence of poor control before pregnancy.

The efficacy of drugs for the treatment of LUTS/BPH, a study in 6 European countries.

OBJECTIVES: This paper profiles the usage and effectiveness of various LUTS/BPH drugs in real-life practice. METHOD: The TRIUMPH study recorded the treatment and outcomes of 2351 newly-presenting LUTS/BPH patients in 6 European countries over a 1-year follow-up period. At each visit the clinician recorded the treatment, co-morbidities, complications and drugs prescribed, and the patient completed an IPSS questionnaire. The results were analysed using change in IPSS as the primary outcome measure. RESULTS: Over the study period 74.9% of patients were prescribed medication, the majority (83% of those medicated) were prescribed only a single drug. Tamsulosin was the most commonly prescribed drug in all countries (38% of medicated cases), although with national variation from 24% in Poland to 70% in Italy. The alpha-blockers were the most effective, with a mean reduction of 6.3 IPSS points. Finasteride was slightly less effective (4.1 points). Significant improvements were seen in 43% of patients on phytotherapy with Serenoa repens or Pygeum africanum compared to 57% of those on finasteride and 68% on alpha-blockers. The only combination therapy found to produce a statistically significant improvement over the use of individual drugs was finasteride+tamsulosin (8.1 points compared to 6.7 for tamsulosin alone and 4.2 for finasteride alone). CONCLUSIONS: All drug treatments showed some improvement over watchful-waiting for most patients over the study period: the alpha-blockers were found to be the most effective. There were marked national differences in prescribing patterns, both in individual drug choice and in the use of combination therapies.

Characteristics of patients presenting with LUTS/BPH in six European countries.

OBJECTIVES: Knowledge of the clinical profile of the population with lower urinary tract symptoms/benign prostatic hyperplasia (LUTS/BPH) is important for health care management, impacting on manpower requirements, pharmacologic demands and health service costs. Data collected by the TransEuropean Research Into the Use of Management Policies for LUTS suggestive of BPH in Primary Health care project were used to profile 4979 patients from six European countries newly presenting with LUTS/BPH to general practitioners or office-based urologists. METHODS: At recruitment, the clinician completed a questionnaire detailing the treatment provided, examination results, and covariates including age, initial symptom severity and comorbidities. The patient completed an International Prostate Symptom Score/quality-of-life questionnaire. RESULTS: The majority of patients (77%) sought medical advice because of the bothersomeness of their symptoms, and presented at ages between 58 and 71 years. Small but statistically significant differences among countries were found in initial symptom severity, initial quality of life and age at diagnosis, but these are not thought to be clinically significant. There were marked national differences in patient management, with, for example, 10% of patients in France reporting no examinations, compared with 0.5% in Poland, while free-flow measurements varied from less than 1% in France to 35% in Poland. CONCLUSIONS: Patient heterogeneity does not explain the differences in patient management among countries, which undoubtedly is the result of differences in health care traditions, infrastructure and socioeconomic factors, as well as patient preference.