Black teenagers are three times more likely than their white counterparts to have steroid-resistant asthma, according to a research conducted at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center.

It was remarked by Joseph Spahn, M.D., a pediatric allergist and director of the Immunopharmacology Lab at National Jewish that African-American children are at an increased risk of being resistant to steroid therapy for curing asthma than their white counterparts.

From News.Bio-Medicine.Org:

“Our results suggest that children with steroid-resistant asthma are more likely to be African-American, to have required treatment with oral steroids at an earlier age and to require larger amounts of oral steroids for only marginal control of their asthma,” said Joseph Spahn, M.D., a pediatric allergist and director of the Immunopharmacology Lab at National Jewish.

Other recent epidemiological studies have shown that blacks with asthma are sicker and have a higher mortality rate than whites with asthma. Doctors at National Jewish now are trying to determine whether blacks have a more vigorous immune response to airway inflammation–which means that higher doses of steroids must be used to control inflammation–or a poor response to steroids secondary to a genetic resistance to the drugs.

“The theory is that with ongoing airway inflammation you get worsening asthma and diminished steroid sensitivity,” Dr. Spahn said.

This study of 164 teen-agers treated at National Jewish also showed that 25 percent of the group was steroid resistant. Children with less than a 15 percent improvement in lung function following a “burst” of inhaled steroids–high doses over seven days–were considered steroid resistant.

“Twenty-five percent of the kids admitted to National Jewish have steroid-resistant asthma, which is much greater than anyone thought,” Dr. Spahn said.

The study was published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and is considered to be the first study of its kind for examining steroid-resistant asthma in children.