1874 Comparison of ﬁxed-dose combinations for asthma *Proportion of patients with at least one prescription. This reﬂects the lowest possible proportion as patients could have received pre- scriptions at another practice not reporting to the IMS Disease Analyzer. Note, because of rounding percentages, these may not always add up to 100%. p-values for association with type of practice and insurance are based on independence chi-square tests. All others are t-tests. BUD ⁄ FORM, budesonide ⁄ formoterol; ICS, inhaled corticosteroid; LABA, long-acting b2-agonist; OCS, oral corticosteroid; SABA, short-acting b2-agonist; SAL ⁄ FLU, salmeterol ⁄ ﬂuticasone. the budesonide ⁄ formoterol group and a higher pro- portion of patients followed by specialists in the salmeterol ⁄ ﬂuticasone group. These differences resulted in a statistically signiﬁcant association between treatment group and type of practice (p = 0.0022). Insurance status also differed signiﬁcantly ª 2008 Ingenix Pharmaceutical Services (UK) Ltd. Journal compilation ª 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Int J Clin Pract, December 2008, 62, 12, 1870–1879 Figure 1 Selection of patients from the IMS Disease Analyzer database Table 3 Characteristics of patients initiating treatment with budesonide ⁄ formoterol or salmeterol ⁄ ﬂuticasone SAL ⁄ FLU group (n = 982) BUD ⁄ FORM group (n = 1456) Characteristic Females, % Mean age, years Insurance status, % Common medical insurance plan Other Company health insurance fund Substitute sickness insurance society Private health insurance Lead physician, % General practice Internal medicine Specialist (other) Comorbidities, % Rhinitis Gastro-oesophageal reﬂux disease Events in pre-index year, % At least one referral related to asthma At least one hospitalisation related to asthma Prescriptions in pre-index year*, % SABA ICS OCS LABA ICS + LABA non-ﬁxed combination 55.0 47.6 28.1 11.2 16.8 29.5 14.4 72.0 20.9 7.1 15.6 3.9 10.6 0.7 41.2 28.2 8.6 13.5 10.1 57.2 48.4 28.9 11.3 20.1 30.7 9.0 76.2 19.8 4.1 13.1 3.9 9.3 0.6 39.8 26.0 6.5 13.9 8.2 g g p-value 0.278 0.32 0.0008 0.0022 0.0867 0.9764 0.2829 0.7764 0.4663 0.2344 0.0596 0.8165 0.1053