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Correspondence
Exercise-Induced AsthmaTo the Editor: In the study of long-term salmeterol treatment for exercise-induced asthma reported by Nelson et al.(July 16 issue), 1 a flaw in the procedure for selecting patients was that not all subjects were receiving concurrent therapy with inhaled corticosteroids, in accordance with asthma-management guidelines. In real life, moreover, patients normally take a b 2 -adrenergic agonist on an occasional basis before engaging in exercise.The authors state that they chose to use exercise because it is an example of a clinically relevant bronchoconstrictor stimulus. Since the inhalation of cold air augments the bronchoconstrictor response to exercise, 2 the exercise protocol they used is in effect an evaluation of two separate bronchoconstrictor stimuli. Since treatment with b 2 -adrenergic agonists is not routinely used as prophylaxis against exposure to cold air, the use of dual stimuli added confounding factors to the interpretation of the data.In their discussion, the authors do not mention the study by Simons et al. 3 This study looked at the effect of once-daily treatment with salmeterol on exercise alone in subjects who were concurrently using inhaled corticosteroids and involved an exercise challenge nine hours after the dose was given. Their study, like the study by Nelson et al., showed loss of protection after regular use.The results at 9 hours in the study by Nelson et al., like those at 6 and 12 hours in the study by Ramage et al., 4 showed that regular treatment with salmeterol provided no significant residual protection, as compared with placebo, after four weeks. These findings suggest that salmeterol should not be administered on a regular basis for exercise-induced asthma. In this respect, the use of albuterol as required before exercise would be more appropriate and cheaper. To the Editor: Nelson et al. conclude that extended administration of salmeterol "does not result in a loss of protection against clinically relevant precipitants of asthma, but the duration of action of the drug is shortened." They also state that the dissociation between salmeterol's bronchodilatory effect, which lasts for at least 12 hours, and its bronchoprotective effect, which does not last as long, "suggests an as yet undefined interaction between the stimulus and the drug." In fact, straightforward...