Summary
Different chemical traces are left in the bloodstream after an asthma attack, depending on whether the cause of the attack was viral or an allergic reaction.
Original source:
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/110/109530.htm
Details
A chemical messenger in the blood can tell doctors whether the cause of an asthma attack is a virus or an allergy.
The finding may one day lead to a new treatment for most severe asthma attacks.
An asthma attack associated with a viral respiratory infection can begin rapidly and be quite severe.
The study found that virus infections are behind nearly 80% of severe asthma attacks.
In the vast majority of cases, the culprit is the common cold virus, which typically shows symptoms such as fever, cough, and upper airway symptoms such as nasal congestion.
Peter G. Gibson, MBBS, of John Hunter Hospital in New Lambton, Australia, and colleagues report the findings in the August issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
"In virus-induced asthma there are different mechanisms operating than those described in allergen-induced asthma," Gibson and colleagues write.
They compared them to 15 people with virus infections but no asthma and to 16 healthy people without asthma or virus infections.
The immune-system cells involved in virus-induced asthma, they confirmed, are different from those involved in allergy-induced asthma.
That helps explain why drugs that usually help control allergic asthma don't work as well for allergy triggered by viral infections.
It's not always easy to tell what is causing a severe asthma attack.
Gibson's team found that virus-induced asthma triggers the release of a specific chemical messenger called interleukin 10 or IL-10.
In an editorial accompanying the Gibson study, University of Wisconsin researchers William W. Busse, MD, and James E. Gern, MD, call the findings "a major step forward."
* How does virus-induced
asthma cause difficult-to-treat airway blockage?
If IL-10 is the culprit, it may be possible to block its asthma-triggering effects.
About the author: Mike Adams is an award-winning journalist and holistic nutritionist with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, and he has published numerous courses on preparedness and survival, including financial preparedness, emergency food supplies, urban survival and tactical self-defense. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In mid 2010, Adams produced TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He also launched an online retailer of environmentally-friendly products (BetterLifeGoods.com) and uses a portion of its profits to help fund non-profit endeavors. He's also a noted technology pioneer and founded a software company in 1993 that developed the HTML email newsletter software currently powering the NaturalNews subscriptions. Adams is currently the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and pursues hobbies such as martial arts, Capoeira, nature macrophotography and organic gardening. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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Monday, August 22, 2005
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