Anti-Inflammatory Reliever South Africa

Over the last two decades non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have been rising in sub-Saharan Africa, and NCDs are set to overtake communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases combined as the leading cause of mortality in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030. Many NCDs have their roots in childhood with lifestyle changes in combination with an increasing median population age in Africa making a further dramatic rise in NCDs in Africa's near future highly likely. The World Health Organization (WHO) now considers the prevention and control of NCDs as an urgent development issue and essential to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and this can only be achieved with childhood interventions. The 2018 WHO report on NCDs, reported 3.8 million deaths annually from non-communicable respiratory diseases (asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), with 78% of deaths in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Asthma morbidity and mortality are preventable with inhaled therapies-however, there is lack of evidence on how to deliver these in an affordable and effective way.

The WHO highlights asthma as an under-appreciated cause of poverty in LMICs that retards economic and social development, erodes the health and well-being of those affected and has a negative impact on families and societies. Asthma aggravates poverty and poverty aggravates asthma. Children miss out on education, adults lose days at work and the costs of drugs, emergency visits, and hospitalization are major financial burdens, not only for individuals/families but also for struggling health systems.

In South Africa, asthma is the most common NCD in childhood affecting 1 in 5 children with a prevalence of asthma symptoms at 21% in adolescence. Despite the availability of asthma medicines in the Essential Medicines List, asthmatic children report having severe asthma symptoms in over 50% of those with asthma. South Africa still reports the fourth highest mortality rate globally. The core to asthma management includes use of chronic use of anti-inflammatory inhaled corticosteroids to address the inflammatory process in the airways (maintenance) and bronchodilators (relievers) for relief of the bronchospasm. Many studies have shown that asthma mortality is linked to poor use of anti-inflammatory inhaler treatment and over-reliance on short- acting β2 bronchodilator reliever therapy to treat asthma exacerbations. In many LMICs including South Africa, the use of controller treatment use of anti-inflammatory inhalers is limited, with only 40% of people with severe asthma symptoms using regular ICS for chronic asthma treatment, but with over 89% using their short-acting β2 agonists. There is a large body of evidence showing that overuse of SABAs is linked with asthma mortality and poorer outcomes.

The combination treatment with budesonide/formoterol for the management of asthma has transformed asthma treatment in high-income countries (HIC), where it is recommended in the very first step of asthma treatment as both an anti-inflammatory and reliever therapy. With the "as needed" use of budesonide/formoterol, asthmatics benefit from the additional dose of a maintenance anti-inflammatory dose, which improves symptom control and reduces exacerbations. This approach has not been adopted in many LMICs related to access to budesonide/formoterol and its cost and therefore, people in LMICs are relegated to use of Track 2 of Global Initiative of Asthma (GINA) treatment which still suggests the use of separate anti-inflammatory and reliever inhalers.

To address this gap, a large body of randomized controlled clinical trial evidence (SYGMA, Novel START, PRACTICAL, and several trials of SMART), have shown that use of budesonide/formoterol as needed (for exacerbations) and for long-term controller treatment compared to separate inhaled corticosteroid and short-acting bronchodilators, reduces the number of asthma exacerbations and improves quality of life. The trials have though been limited in that there is no data on the cost-effectiveness of this approach in lower resourced settings and limited data from small studies participant numbers (\<100) of this approach in children 6-11 years of age. Based on this, the approach of using budesonide/formoterol has not been recommended by the Global Initiative of Asthma (GINA) strategy for global asthma management in Step 1 and 2 of treatment in children 6-11 years of age both in HIC and LMICs, but rather on the higher steps of asthma treatment where symptoms are more severe.

The investigators therefore propose in a randomized controlled trial to assess the efficacy of budesonide/formoterol compared to the standard of care (separate inhaled corticosteroid and bronchodilator) inhaler approach to prevent asthma exacerbations, improve asthma control and quality of life and to also assess the cost-effectiveness of budesonide/formoterol compared to standard of care in children and adolescents in South Africa. The data will be novel as the investigators will for the first time include a large number of children in a clinical trial comparing the two approaches, to provide definitive evidence of the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of this approach in children and adolescents.