Today, we of the Florida Lung Doctors spotlight a recent study in asthma. According to a medical dictionary, we can define asthma is “An inflammatory disease of the lungs characterized by (in most cases) reversible airway obstruction. Originally, a term used to mean “difficult breathing”; now used to denote bronchial asthma.” If you wish to review more background on this disease before continuing with this article about new asthma research, please click here.
Filled with symptom-easing steroids, inhalers are often used by asthma sufferers for quick and easy relief. However, for asthmatics whose lungs are steroid-resistant, relief is not so quick or easy. Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System posed these questions:
1. Why are some patients’ lungs resistant to this medication?
2. Can we find a way to identify patients who will become resistant to steroid inhalers?
Like detectives in a crime novel, pathology professor Dr. Nicholas Lukacs, Ph.D., and Bryan Petersen, U-M Medical School’s Medical Scientist Training doctoral student, searched for answers relentlessly. These scientists discovered a “new type of cell in mice that appears to be crucial to causing asthma symptoms — even in the presence of steroid.” Then they recruited asthma and allergy specialist Dr. Alan Baptist, M.D. to assist them in their studies of two types of people: those who had been diagnosed with asthma and those who did not have the disease.
In summary, the final finding was that the blood of volunteers with asthma possessed cells very similar to those they had discovered in the mice, special cells possessing receptors for a very special protein. These cells triggered asthma and resisted steroids. Read more details about their exciting data at this source.
Now that this steroid resisting cell has been identified, more studies with larger numbers of volunteers can be pursued. Once researchers have a clear way to target these cells, they can determine medicines and therapies that will work to neutralize them. We of the Orlando Lung Doctors commend the scientists who use microscopes and mice to make life-changing discoveries for mankind and medicines for our patients.
As always, we of the Florida Allergy, Asthma and Sleep Center, thank you for reading our blog, and we will continue to bring you the latest news concerning your lungs and respiratory system.