A study by the National Institutes of Health and published online in the New England Journal of Medicine has found the addition of long-acting beta-agonist therapy to be the most effective of three step-up, or supplemental, treatments for children whose asthma is not well controlled on low doses of inhaled corticosteroids alone. The study, called Best Add on Therapy Giving Effective Responses (BADGER), also identified several patient characteristics that increased the likelihood of identifying which step-up treatment would be more effective for an individual child. For example, African-American study participants were equally likely to respond best to long-acting beta-agonist step-up or inhaled corticosteroids step-up, and least likely to respond best to leukotriene receptor antagonist step-up.  For white participants, the addition of a long-acting beta-agonist was clearly the most likely step-up therapy to give the best response, with inhaled corticosteroids step-up the least favorable therapy. For more information, please click here.