For most of their lives, Upper Hutt brothers Alec and Ronan Gall have used the blue Ventolin inhalers familiar to several generations of New Zealanders to relieve their asthma symptoms.
But over the past year, Alec, 14, and Ronan, 11, have been using a different inhaler, Symbicort, which both relieves and helps prevent the symptoms. Symbicort is now the recommended first-line treatment to relieve symptoms in adolescents and adults after clinical trials by the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand (MRINZ) found it reduced the incidence of severe asthma attacks by between a third and a half.
Under current asthma guidelines, Symbicort is not yet recommended for children with mild asthma who, as with adults, account for most asthma cases. Instead, their recommended treatment is Ventolin or a similar inhaler called Respigen. However, that may eventually change, thanks to the efforts of Alec, Ronan and another 378 young people aged 5 to 15 taking part in an
