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MHRA issues advice on prescribing asthma inhalers

The chief executive of the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has written to healthcare professionals to ensure they are correctly prescribing CFC-free inhalers to treat asthma.

There are two CFC-free inhalers available on the UK market that contain the active substance beclometasone dipropionate, namely Trinity-Chiesi Pharmaceuticals’ Clenil Modulite and Ivax Laboratories’ Qvar. However these two inhalers have been designed differently and provide different quantities of the active drug to the lungs.

Qvar is approximately twice as potent as Clenil Modulite. The regulator stressed that it is important that this is taken into account, and adjust doses accordingly, to ensure that patients receive an appropriately effective dose and to prevent potential safety concerns arising if patients are either switched from a CFC-containing inhaler to a CFC-free inhaler, or if patients are switched from one CFC-free inhaler to the other CFC-free inhaler.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is asking doctors and other prescribers of inhalers for asthma to state clearly on the prescription which product should be dispensed by using the brand name, rather than prescribing the inhaler by using the generic name.

The regulator said that, if a pharmacist receives a generic prescription for a beclometasone dipropionate inhaler, they should establish whether a CFC-free product is required, and if so, which of the two available branded products should be dispensed.