As common as asthma is, exactly how it starts remains murky. Scientists have now identified a new root cause, and importantly a new angle for treating the disease that can prevent the main symptoms.
According to WHO, asthma affects around 262 million people worldwide, but despite its prevalence there’s still much scientists don’t understand about the condition. It’s usually treated as an inflammatory disease – triggers like pollen or dust set off inflammation that narrows the airways and makes it difficult to breathe. Inhaler medications can relieve this by relaxing the airways and calming inflammation.
But the new study points to a different root cause, of which inflammation is itself a symptom. When the airway muscles contract – known as bronchoconstriction – the epithelial cells that line the airways are 'squeezed out' and later die. With fewer of these cells acting as a barrier, the chances for future asthma attacks increase.
New flu drug aims to keep you in a 'Goldilocks zone' of lung inflammation
By Paul McClure
April 12, 2024
A new drug for severe influenza successfully keeps patients at the perfect level of lung inflammation to protect against lung damage, while still allowing the immune system to fight off the infection. It's proven effective in mice even days after infection.
If you’ve ever caught the flu, you’ve more than likely been infected with the Influenza A virus (IAV). Compared to the Influenza B virus, infection with the A type often produces more severe symptoms. But, while many of us have experienced the fever and chills, headache and muscle aches, fatigue, sore throat and cough of a run-of-the-mill flu, severe infection with IAV is a different, potentially life-threatening beast.
University of Oxford researchers have for the first time established a controlled human infection model for tuberculosis (TB) that infects people via the lungs—the way TB enters the body.
The clinical trial, which used the BCG vaccine delivered via aerosol into participants' lungs, is a first step towards establishing a challenge model that can be used to test new TB vaccines. The paper is published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Human challenge models have contributed significantly to the development of vaccines for diseases such as malaria or typhoid, especially in early-phase trials. They help scientists select which vaccines should be taken forward into larger field efficacy studies and could be particularly useful with pathogens like tuberculosis, where vaccine development is very difficult.
