28th March 2019
New joint research study by UCLan and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital hopes to develop a better understanding of how children inhale
A UCLan pharmaceutics researcher is working with Alder Hey Children’s Hospital to develop a better understanding of how children inhale and represents a move towards personalised inhaled therapy for paediatric patients with asthma.
This new joint research study is investigating the impact of age, breathing pattern, disease severity and competency in use, as well as type of spacer device, on drug deposition in the lungs of children aged between 5 and 16 and suffering from asthma.
To date, there are no studies that bridge in vivo parameters and in vitro data for children with asthma, and the proposed research is the first in vivo study which compares actual paediatric patient asthmatic breathing profiles in the presence, absence and variation of type of spacer devices.
Dr Amina Ferraz, Principal Lecturer at the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences said: “pressurised metered dose inhalers are widely prescribed; however, their efficacy is critically dependent upon the patient’s aptitude to learn and demonstrate correct inhaler technique. This becomes even more challenging when we are dealing with children. The current prescribing of inhalers and spacer devices for children can be problematic due to the absence of any robust data about the inhalation manoeuvres of paediatric patients. Dr Chahinez Houacine, Post-Doctoral Research Assistant, is working hard to collect the data and we hope to be able to move to the next phase of the study soon.”
