London ? An asthma treatment that targets the inflammation rather than just reacting to symptoms could be more effective in reducing severe attacks, new research suggests.

Conventional treatment, based on simple breathing tests and noting other symptoms, sometimes cannot head off an asthma attack.

Scientific advances may now provide an early warning. A study published this week in The Lancet medical journal indicates for the first time that looking for microscopic cells in phlegm led to fewer attacks and fewer admissions to the hospital.

Asthma, which is one of the most common chronic diseases worldwide, makes the sides of the airways in the lungs thick and swollen, causing recurring episodes of wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness and coughing.

For many patients, medication must be taken every day to control symptoms and prevent attacks.

According to the new study, microscopic cells called eosinophils, which cause the airway inflammation that leads to asthma symptoms, can be found in phlegm several weeks before an asthma attack.

“This study shows that tailoring therapy to the degree of eosinophilic inflammation seems to be better than the rather blind approach which we use at the present time,” said Dr. Martyn Partridge, chief medical adviser to the National Asthma Campaign in Britain.

Partridge, who was not involved in the study, said “if we had a better noninvasive marker of inflammation, it would enable us to tailor the medication more closely to that patient’s degree of inflammation.”

In the study by scientists at the Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, England, 74 patients with moderate to severe asthma who were already regularly coming to the hospital for asthma treatment were randomly allocated to either the traditional strategy of managing asthma or to an approach aimed at controlling the concentration of eosinophils in their phlegm.

All patients were assessed nine times over 12 months. Patients in the phlegm analysis group had their medication adjusted in response to changes in their eosinophil levels.

There were 35 asthma attacks in the phlegm test group during the year, compared with 109 attacks in the group with the normal treatment strategy. Only one patient in the test group was hospitalized for asthma problems, compared with six in the other group.