Study of Efficacy of Phenytoin in Therapy of Children With Bronchial Asthma

Effective therapy of asthma still remains quite serious problem. According GINA definition, asthma is an inflammatory disorder. Consequently, modern pharmacotherapy of asthma provides wide use of anti-inflammatory drugs. But asthma also is a paroxysmal disorder: many specialists and even some guidelines underline paroxysmal clinical picture of asthma. Besides this, according to some authors, neurogenic inflammation may play important role in asthma mechanism. It is known that some other neurogenic inflammatory paroxysmal disorders exist, and they are migraine and trigeminal neuralgia. Antiepileptic drug phenytoin is very effective in therapy of trigeminal neuralgia - more than in 70-80% of cases. Other antiepileptic drugs, salts of valproic acid, are effective in the treatment of migraine. If bronchial asthma also is paroxysmal inflammatory disease, like migraine and trigeminal neuralgia, it is possible that some antiepileptic drugs also are very effective in asthma therapy. We perform a double-blind, placebo-controlled 3-month trial for evaluation of phenytoin efficacy in therapy of bronchial asthma in children. Phenytoin is a well-known, comparatively safe and effective antiepileptic drug with low cost. According our previous data, phenytoin is effective drug for asthma therapy in adults. Comparison: children will receive investigational drug in addition to their usual routine antiasthmatic treatment, compared to patients received placebo in addition to their usual routine antiasthmatic treatment.