TY - JOUR T1 - High inhaled corticosteroids adherence in childhood asthma: the role of medication beliefs JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 1072 LP - 1074 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00096912 VL - 40 IS - 5 AU - Francine M. Ducharme Y1 - 2012/11/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/40/5/1072.abstract N2 - For two decades, maintenance inhaled corticosteroids have been recommended by international guidelines as the mainstay of treatment in children and adults with persistent asthma. As asthma control criteria have become increasingly more stringent, an even larger proportion of individuals are labelled as having “uncontrolled persistent” asthma. Indeed, while in 1996, we accepted as criteria for acceptable control as up to 10 doses per week of rescue β2-agonists, that is to say one dose per day for the prevention of exercise-induced asthma and three doses per week for the relief of symptoms [1], they were progressively reduced to two doses per week since 2006 [2]. An expanding proportion of individuals with mild asthma now qualify for maintenance controller therapy. The preference for daily inhaled corticosteroids over leukotriene receptor antagonists and placebo is solidly supported by systematic reviews of the efficacy of randomised controlled trials [3, 4] in children and adults [5–7].However, most patients with mild persistent asthma do not use maintenance inhaled corticosteroids and most individuals remain poorly controlled [8–10]. Insufficient use of inhaled corticosteroids may be due to suboptimal medical prescriptions and to limited patient access to healthcare and medications [11, 12]. However, even in settings where patients have free access to medications, adherence remains suboptimal; many discontinue asthma controllers when asymptomatic and restart therapy when deemed required [11–13]. Reasons for poor patient adherence include: side effects, fear of side effects, forgetfulness, inconvenience of medication use, the erroneous conception that no symptoms equate to no disease, and negative beliefs about always having asthma, having airway inflammation, and about the importance of using inhaled corticosteroids [10, 13, 14]. Yet, suboptimal adherence to … ER -