Public health professor: Evidence-based advice needed

Patients with asthma should receive advice to maintain their condition based on strategies that have been proved to be successful, a public health professor has argued.

Dr Noreen Clark is based at the University of Michigan and is also national programme director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Allies Against Asthma programme.

Her comments follow a review which concluded that products and interventions are not effective at targeting minute house dust mites that can trigger asthma attacks.

Interventions reviewed included washing bed sheets at high temperatures and using chemicals to target the mites.

She described the review as important and said that when a doctor recommends a management strategy that is difficult to carry out and it fails to produce the desired result, the patient loses confidence in other effective things the doctor has recommended.

"Patient treatment and counselling should focus on a few things that evidence shows will be significant in getting the disease under control," Dr Clark said.

"This study suggests that trying to reduce exposure to dust mites by covering mattresses, using ionizers, washing bedding at high temperatures, and so on, will not help and should not be on the list."