A lot of children and young people have asthma. Some experience severe asthma attacks and they need to be admitted to hospital.

The NHS has a specific programme that is designed to improve the management of asthma for children and young people, including asthma attacks.

One gap in our knowledge is which of these three injection medicines works best to treat severe asthma attacks.

Children in the UK between 2 and 18 years who attend an emergency department (A&E) with a severe asthma attack, will be randomised to one of the three medicines.

All three medicines have been used to treat children and young people with severe asthma attacks for many years and have a good safety record.

Randomisation means that every patient has an equal chance of receiving each of the three medicines.

Information for the study will be collected from patients’ medical notes.

We will ask for consent to include a child’s data. No-one will be identifiable from the trial data.

Young people and their parents or carers will be asked for feedback on the treatment they’ve received.

The doctors and nurses looking after them will also be asked to review how they felt the medicines worked.

Hospitals across the UK are taking part in the study, including sites in Edinburgh, Leicester, Southampton and Alder Hey (Liverpool).

More hospitals will be joining the trial.