Somebody Stole My Inhaler Idea. Finally!

Wordpress lately has been reminding me of posts I published on the same day in years past, taking me down memory lane. Hard to believe it’s been 18 years…)

Years ago, I remember telling people I had this brilliant idea to improve asthma control. Slip some steroid into the rescue inhaler, so that the more often patients use it, the more steroid they inhale. This month, decades later the New England Journal of Medicine has an article about just this idea, a new inhaler called AIRSUPRA. No surprise, it works. This type of combination reduces risk for future severe attacks without increasing the risk for adverse effects.

I am not at all upset that somebody else finally had the same idea; I’m just a country doctor, not a researcher or statistician. I’m just happy that asthmatics who resist getting one more inhaler can have a sort of autotitration in a single prescription device.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2203163

And if anybody out there is looking for more ideas, I have often wondered why there isn’t a combination condiment for hot dogs like mutchup – half mustard and half ketchup. Go ahead and create it, I won’t sue for a share of the profits! (Update: Such a product already existed - since 2019 - called MUSTKETCH.)