BACKGROUND The adverse effects of long term treatment of asthma with the short acting beta agonist fenoterol have been established in both epidemiological and clinical studies. A study was undertaken to investigate the efficacy and safety of long term treatment with salbutamol and salmeterol in patients with mild to moderate bronchial asthma. METHODS In a two centre double dummy crossover stu...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of inhaled salmeterol in patients managed in nonspecialist practice settings. DESIGN A randomized, double-blind, 6-month, parallel-group study involving 253 centers. SETTING Primarily nonspecialist practices (n = 232). PATIENTS A total of 911 subjects (417 men; 494 women) who met American Thoracic Society asthma criteria were enrol...

Van der Heijden, H. F. M., L. M. A. Heunks, H. Folgering, C. L. A. van Herwaarden, and P. N. R. Dekhuijzen. b2-Adrenoceptor agonists reduce the decline of rat diaphragm twitch force during severe hypoxia. Am. J. Physiol. 276 (Lung Cell. Mol. Physiol. 20): L474–L480, 1999.—The aim of the present study was to investigate the in vitro effects of the short-acting b2-adrenoceptor agonist salbutamol ...

Dizziness, together with hypotension and faintness, are well-known adverse drug reactions of salbutamol that have been related to its cardiovascular effects. However, we could find no published reference to vertigo in patients taking salmeterol, in the absence of cardiovascular alterations. We present the case of a woman who experienced four independent episodes of vertigo lasting 36 h each, fo...

BACKGROUND Salmeterol is a potent selective beta 2 agonist that has been shown to have a duration of action in excess of 12 hours. In this study salmeterol and salbutamol were compared over a three month period with a further extension of nine months. METHODS Three hundred and eighty eight patients with mild to moderate reversible airways obstruction (forced expiratory volume in one second (F...

1 Suissa S, Ernst P, Vandemheen KL, Aaron SD. Methodological issues in therapeutic trials of COPD. Eur Respir J 2008; 31: 927–933. 2 Sin DD, Wu L, Anderson JA, et al. Inhaled corticosteroids and mortality in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Thorax 2005; 60: 992–997. 3 Calverley PM, Anderson JA, Celli B, et al. Salmeterol and fluticasone propionate and survival in chronic obstructive pulmo...

BACKGROUND To evaluate the effect of variation of the Arg16Gly polymorphism of the β2-adrenergic receptor gene on clinical response to salmeterol administered with fluticasone propionate in Chinese Han asthmatic patients. METHODS Moderate persistent asthmatic patients (n = 62) currently receiving short-acting β2-agonists were administered twice-daily therapy with salmeterol/fluticasone propio...

200 words] Indacaterol is a novel, inhaled, once-daily, ultra-long-acting β2-agonist bronchodilator, recently approved in Europe for the treatment of COPD. This study set out to investigate the efficacy and safety of indacaterol compared with placebo and the twice-daily β2-agonist, salmeterol, as an active control. Patients with moderate-to-severe COPD were randomized to 6 months’ double-blind ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Long-acting beta2-agonists (LABAs) have proved to be useful in the management of asthma and prevention of exacerbations. LABAs can modulate inflammatory and repair processes in the airways of individuals affected by many respiratory disorders. This study assessed the effects of LABAs on the release of inflammatory mediators by bronchial epithelia. METHODS The effects of...

In the current study, we investigated the effect of a long-acting β -agonist (salmeterol) and a phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4) inhibitor (cilomilast) on human lung fibroblast-mediated collagen gel contraction. Higher concentrations of salmeterol (10(-7) and 10(-6) M) inhibited fibroblast-mediated collagen gel contraction. No effect was observed with cilomilast alone (up to 10(-5) M). In the presenc...