Treatment of mild persistent asthma by cutaneous electronic stimulation

Abstract

To the Editors: The Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) has emphasised the importance of assessing control in response to treatment in grading asthma severity 1. However, many asthma patients are inadequately controlled despite conventional treatment. GINA also recognises a potential role for complementary medicine in asthma management 1. FenzianTM (Eumedic Ltd, Hungerford, UK) is a device that provides low current cutaneous electronic stimulation (CES) and is Food and Drug Administration licensed under the category of minimal risk (Device # 21 FR 882.5890) for biofeedback and treatment of pain. Biofeedback might influence bronchial smooth muscle constriction or perception of asthma control. We examined the hypothesis that CES, added to conventional treatment over 6 weeks, improves asthma control, pulmonary function, symptoms and reliance on rescue bronchodilator therapy in patients with persistent asthma. In total, 20 subjects were recruited (nine males and 11 females), aged 18–65 yrs with a clinical history of mild-to-moderate persistent asthma for ≥3 months 2 and forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) between 50% of predicted and the lower limit of normal 3. They reported using short-acting bronchodilator therapy on ≥4 days in 2 weeks. Their treatment regimen …