A study of nearly 300 patients with mild persistent asthma found that inhaled steroids — long considered the gold standard for asthma treatment — were no more effective than placebo in nearly three-fourths of the study patients, all over age 12. Inhaled steroids were better than placebo for a subset of the patients who had high levels of a particular type of inflammatory cells, called eosinophils, in their sputum, but they represented about a fourth of patients enrolled in the trial.
Source: EurekaAlert, https://www.eurekalert.org