NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People with milder asthma symptoms tend to fare better in the long-term if they start using inhaled steroids early on, a new study suggests.

General guidelines suggest that people with mild but persistent asthma use inhaled corticosteroids on a daily basis to help control their symptoms. The steroids work by reducing inflammation in the airways, helping to prevent attacks of wheezing and breathlessness.

In the new study, researchers found that adults and children who started on the inhaled steroid budesonide (Pulmicort) soon after their asthma diagnosis tended to have better symptom control over the next five years.

Compared with patients using other asthma drugs, they had fewer serious asthma attacks and needed fewer asthma medications overall to control their condition, the researchers report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Dr. William W. Busse, of the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison, led the study. Sweden-based AstraZeneca, which makes Pulmicort, funded the work.

The study included 7,241 patients ages 5 to 66 who had recently been diagnosed with mild persistent asthma. Roughly half were assigned to take the inhaled steroid every day, in addition to "usual therapy" such as quick-acting inhaled medications used to relieve asthma attacks.

The rest of the patients stuck with usual therapy alone for the first three years of the study, after which they were given the option to start on budesonide.

Overall, Busse and his colleagues found, patients who started inhaled steroid therapy early on had better asthma control over the long term. They also had less need for certain other asthma medications, including long-acting beta-agonists -- another type of daily, inhaled drug.

The findings, the researchers write, "support current guideline recommendations for the daily use of inhaled corticosteroid therapy in adults and children with mild persistent asthma."

They add that early use of inhaled steroids may also reduce the number of medications asthmatic patients ultimately need to control their symptoms.