Can vitamin D increase the effectiveness of asthma treatments?

Asthma UK is funding a clinical trial to discover whether vitamin D tablets might increase the effectiveness of current asthma treatments.

Over five million people in the UK have asthma. Scientists estimate that for around half a million of these people, their symptoms can’t be prevented by standard treatments.

These individuals live in fear of a life-threatening attack, and experience ongoing asthma symptoms, so there is a desperate need to improve the effectiveness of treatments available.

Dr Catherine Hawrylowicz is a researcher in the world-renowned MRC-Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma at Imperial College London.

She and her colleagues are performing a clinical trial to discover whether vitamin D tablets can increase the effectiveness of steroid treatments.

If this is the case, thousands more people could potentially be freed from asthma symptoms, dramatically improving their quality of life.

• Start date: October 2008
• Duration of study: two years
• Total cost to Asthma UK: £122,391