Vitamin D supplements reduce the risk of asthma attacks
(Mirror Daily, United States) Asthma is a respiratory disease that you have to live with. If you suffer from asthma, then you know how difficult and bad are asthma attacks. However, doctors thought of a way of helping asthma patients. Vitamin D supplements should be added to their usual treatment.
The new study on treating asthma attacks was led by Adrian Martineau (Queen Mary University of London). According to his findings, vitamin D supplements are the key to lowering the number of asthma attacks which a patient can have. However, patients are highly advised to stick to the prescribed treatment.
The lead author also added that further analyses need to be carried out in order to make sure that these supplements are what asthma patients need.
The results are based on several trials. Researchers studied the cases of more than one thousand patients, children among them. They also took into consideration several stages of the disease, from mild forms to severe ones. American and British patients helped the researchers with their studies, as well as patients from Japan, Poland, and India.
What the scientists observed when analyzing these cases was that the disease takes advantage of the low level of vitamin D in the organisms of patients. This is how they came up with the idea of increasing the vitamin D level of asthma patients. There is a high possibility that the supplements should help them with the nasty asthma attacks.
The members of the research team observed yet another advantage of vitamin D supplements. It seems that the substances are enough for patients so that they can now reduce the level of steroids they are on.
These are the only improvements that vitamin D supplements can provide the asthma patients with. The doctors also noted that besides reducing the asthma attack, the medication couldn’t further help the patients with other symptoms.
Researchers observed that the best results were with mild and moderate asthma patients. They still need to investigate and develop further formulas for people who suffer from severe forms of the disease. However, scientists also intend to revise all of their results before making a public statement of the vitamin D supplements being added to the regular treatment of asthma patients.
A paper on vitamin D supplements was published in the journal Cochrane Library on September 6.
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