Asthma Research

A new type of immune cell that can be out of control in certain chronic inflammatory diseases, worsening the symptoms of conditions like psoriasis and asthma, is described for the first time this week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The authors of the study, from Imperial College London, the...

Being allergic to dogs or cats may worsen your ragweed allergies, according to a study from Queen's University. Researchers found that people with pet allergies often develop ragweed allergy symptoms more quickly than others. But the study also suggests that once allergy season is in full swing, those symptom differences subside.

A new study on pediatric H1N1 influenza admissions has found that asthma is a significant risk factor for severe disease in children with pandemic H1N1 compared with the seasonal flu. The study, led by researchers from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Ontario, is published online November 18 in CMAJ ...

As almost 40,000 runners get set to take part in this year's London Marathon, a new study has found that one in three will suffer from allergies after the event. Post-marathon sniffles are a common complaint among runners, but they are often put down to infections taking advantage of a depleted immune system caused by the effort involved. Now, however...

Researchers have proved that a single "master switch" enzyme, known as aldose reductase, is key in producing excess mucous that clogs the airways of people with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The enzyme's action can be blocked by drugs whose safety has been shown in clinical trials for other diseases -- a discovery that could improve therapies for the 510 million people worldwide suffering from asthma and COPD.

Led by Dr Carsten Flohr, a Clinical Scientist from The University of Nottingham, and Dr Luc Nguyen Tuyen from the Khanh Hoa Provincial Health Service in central Vietnam, the study is the largest double-blind placebo controlled clinical trial to date looking at the potential links between hookworm and other gut worm infections and allergic conditions such as asthma and eczema. Thanks to improved hygiene practices parasitic worms have been mostly eradicated among human populations living in developed countries. However, experts believe that over millions of years of co-evolution worms have found methods...

Patients with asthma often experience a worsening of asthmatic symptoms at night in so-called "nocturnal asthma." According to reports, more than 50% of asthma...

A pregnant woman's exposure to microbes may protect her child from developing allergies later in life. Researchers in Marburg, Germany find that exposure to environmental bacteria triggers a mild inflammatory response in pregnant mice that renders their offspring resistant to allergies. The study...

A pandemic of ailments called the "allergic march" — the gradual acquisition of overlapping allergic diseases that commonly begins in early childhood — has...

People with multi-symptom asthma more often have night-time awakenings due to asthma-symptoms, a sign of severe asthma. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Respiratory Research have shown that asthma with multiple symptoms is more highly prevalent than previously suggested, comprising 20- 25% of all asthmatics.

Household dust contains up to 1000 different species of microbes, with tens of millions of individual bacterial cells in each gram. And these are just the ones that can be grown in the lab! Dr Helena Rintala, speaking at the Society for General Microbiology's autumn meeting in Nottingham describes how we share our living and working spaces with millions of microbes, not all of whom are bad news.