wrin

There are three hallmark signs of asthma.

Bronchoconstriction, increased secretions, and inflammation.

The prednisone takes care of the inflammation.

Prednisone is the big-guns of anti-inflammatories -- it also has the most side-effects. It is not to be used for maintenance unless you physically CAN NOT tolerate anything else.

Whether you come in contact with these triggers or not is partly irrelevant -- I say partly because as much as if you are exposed to them more, you will get sicker, if you are not ever exposed to them at all, the inflammation will still be present, albeit in a smaller amount.

It is practically impossible to never come in contact with your trigger or allergen again, especially when you consider like 99% of north americans have some severity of an allergy to dust mites. (Even if that allergy is miniscule.)

Wheezing and constriction can happen from the bronchospasm, or the muscles constricting when you have an acute attack. This can happen in the absence of large amounts of inflammation, but inflammation makes it worse, as your airway lumen size is further decreased by the inflammation. This is to say that no matter how small the amount of inflammation you have, it means that the airway hyperreactivity that is a hallmark of asthma will probably never go away, so you will never be totally safe from having another acute attack.

They are *technically* brought back to their comfortable state of normalcy, but you need to maintain some kind of maintenance steroid therapy (usually inhaled steroids will do the trick if you're not severely severely asthmatic) to keep the inflammation from coming back.

This is one of those an-ounce-of-prevention-is-worth-a-pound-of-cure things. 500mcg of Flovent inhaled will do a good job of preventing an asthma attack that'll take a week-long-course of 5mg prednisone to kill.

[This message has been edited by wrin (edited 01-22-2003).]