Constant sneezing and nasal irritation - reaction to Seretide

Hi,

New member, first post.

I was first diagnosed with asthma in 2008. Ever since I started taking preventer inhalers (I'm now using Seretide 250) I've been sneezing constantly. 30-50 times a day. I'm also constantly full of mucus.

Before I was diagnosed, I was coughing all the time. Immediately after I started with preventers, the coughing stopped and the sneezing started.

Last week I was down with acute sinusitis and taking various things for it. Partly because of this, and because I kept forgetting, I wasn't taking Seretide at all, but using Salbutamol once a day if I felt I needed to. My sneezing stopped.

The sinusitis is much better and I'm now back on the seretide. My sneezing is back and I'm bunged up also.

I often find that once I wake up, before I do ANYTHING, I start a sneezing chain. The weird thing is that it doesn't matter if I wake up at 3am, 6am or 10am - once I've been awake for more than 5 minutes I start sneezing.

Could this be due to an allergy to seretide? If so what alternatives are there?

thanks

Martin

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That's a lot of sneezes!

I don't know about side effects, but just sort of thinking it out, there are some other possibilities to consider and maybe discuss with your doctor if they make sense to you:

a) seretide helps reduce inflammation - maybe when inflammation starts going down, mucus can flow more easily. That in turn creates irritation that produces a sneeze?

b) The sneezing five minutes after waking: after waking? or after standing/sitting up? Perhaps while you are sleeping mucus accumulates in the sinuses. Then when you wake and stand or sit up, gravity pulls it down, creating irritation and hence sneezing a certain amount of time after waking?

c) Are you also on a steriod nasal spray, e.g. flixonase or an alternative? Some people have both rhinitis (either allergic or not) *and* asthma. They are usually given both a nasal spray and an ICS (i.e. seretide). The seretide helps with the asthma, but not with the rhinitis.

d) Another possibility - maybe seretide is changing the way you cough? are you sure it is a sneeze and not a different way of coughing? Coughing is really hard on the throat so sometimes when I feel a cough soon enough I can relax the throat. What comes out will often sound more like a sneeze than a cough.

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Hi Beth,

No, it's really a sneeze. A really loud, powerful sneeze that blows a hole in the tissue!

As for the waking up part, if I wake up in the night, and I'm awake for long enough (even if I don't sit up) I will start to sneeze.

I do have beconase but I have not noticed a difference. That might be because I'm not using it often enough? Also when I'm totally blocked up it can't get up there anyway.

The sneezing starts with a really tangible irritation in my nose, a slightly less severe feeling than if I sniffed up a load of white pepper.

I've asked the asthma nurse and GPs about it repeatedly, but they just shrug their shoulders!

thanks

Martin

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Hmm an intriguing problem! It's very useful of the GP and nurse to just shrug their shoulders without offering some sort of investigation!

Sorry I can't offer any help or advice, I hope you get to the bottom of it. Maybe you could request trying a different preventer with different active ingredients? Or try separate inhalers so you can see if its the steroid or the LABA part of the seretide?

Good luck

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There are some alternative combination inhalers you could ask to try. Symbicort, fostair and flutiform.

Might also be worth ringing the asthma nurses for some ideas, the number is at the top of the page.