Study Suggests an Improved Way to Treat COPD

22 June 2010

Years of smoking, or breathing other people's smoke, is the most common cause of COPD

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, is a life-threatening condition commonly caused by years of smoking. Doctors say that over time the damage interferes with the natural exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the lungs.

COPD is not curable but treatment can extend a patient's life. Doctors often treat it with steroids. Now, a study shows that low doses of the medicine given by mouth are equal to, or better than, a heavy dose administered into the blood.

Researchers studied patients treated at four hundred hospitals in two thousand six and two thousand seven. The patients received steroids either intravenously or by mouth.

The study found that those who received lower doses of steroids by mouth spent less time in the hospital. Also, their risk of side effects such as glaucoma, high blood pressure and edema, or swelling in the legs, was reduced.

Peter Lindenauer from Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts, led the study. The findings are in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The World Health Organization estimates that more than two hundred million people have been found to have COPD. Most live in low and middle income countries.