Steroid tablets

Blister pack of tablets. If your asthma symptoms become severe, your doctor or asthma nurse may give you a short course (3-14 days) of steroid tablets. Steroid tablets work quickly and powerfully to help to calm your inflamed airways. Short courses of steroid tablets are also used to treat acute asthma attacks and are used for essential emergency treatment of asthma attacks.

If you finish a short course of steroids but are not back to normal, you should visit your doctor. You may need to continue the course for more days to get your asthma back under control.

A small number of people with severe asthma find that their preventer medicine and short courses of steroid tablets are not enough to control their asthma. They need to take steroid tablets for a longer period.

Why do I need to keep taking preventer medicine when I am taking steroid tablets?

The main reason why you should continue taking preventer medicines is because that means your steroid tablet dose can be as low as possible.

Stopping regular steroid tablets: A warning

When you are taking regular tablet steroids your adrenal gland becomes lazy, and makes less of its own natural steroids. This means you have less ability to cope with infections or deal with physical stress.

Long courses of steroid tablets (three weeks or more) can be stopped only by gradual reduction and under the guidance of your doctor or asthma nurse. If they are stopped suddenly you will be very vulnerable to infection and less able to cope with any crisis such as an operation. For this reason the doses should be reduced slowly over weeks or months.


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