Doctors have been urged to encourage patients with long-term medical conditions to be hopeful about their treatment, experts have recommended, with those who were more likely to manage their illness effectively.

A study by researchers from London and Sao Paulo, Brazil, found more children with asthma or type-1 diabetes complied with monitoring and treatment regimes if they were ‘hopeful’ than those who were merely ‘optimistic’.

They defined optimism as "an individual’s confidence in a good outcome, whereas hope is a goal oriented way of thinking that makes an individual invest time and energy in planning how to achieve their aims".

"Training tells us to avoid saying, 'You are going to get better,' because there is rarely such certainty and, in the case of poor outcomes, unfulfilled expectations will erode trust", the study’s authors wrote in a paper published in the British Medical Journal.

"Clinicians are apprehensive about offering false hope and can end up ignoring the question of hope altogether. This is particularly challenging for those of us caring for patients with chronic and progressive diseases—we fear looking incompetent when we have no curative treatments to offer."