Asthma is a clinical syndrome characterized by episodic reversible airway obstruction, increased bronchial reactivity, and airway inflammation. Asthma results from complex interactions among inflammatory cells, their mediators, airway epithelium and smooth muscle, and the nervous system. In genetically susceptible individuals, these interactions can lead the patient with asthma to symptoms of breathlessness, wheezing, cough, and chest tightness.
Causes of Asthma
Causes or triggers of asthma can be divided into allergic and nonallergic etiologies. Aeroallergens can include seasonal pollen, mold spores, dust mites, and animal allergens.
Nonallergic causes of asthma can include smoke, odors, cold air and weather, chemicals, medications (eg, aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs [NSAIDs)], beta-blockers), exercise, hormonal changes (eg, pregnancy, menstrual cycle), and bisulfite food additives.
Co-morbidities of asthma include sinusitis, nasal polyposis, gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD) and allergic rhinitis.
Genetic differences may alter susceptibility to asthma, as well as responsiveness to asthma medications. Significant genetic variation exists between and within racial and ethnic groups, but the issue is confounded by important coexisting economic, cultural, and environmental differences, including geography (place of birth).
Allergy-associated asthma
Environmental exposure in sensitized individuals is a major inducer of airway inflammation, which is a hallmark finding in the asthmatic lung. Although triggers induce inflammation through different pathways, the resulting effects all lead to increased bronchial reactivity.
Allergies trigger asthma attacks in 60-90% of children and in 50% of adults. Approximately 75-85% of patients with asthma have positive (immediate) skin test results. In children, this sensitization is associated with disease activity.
How Is Asthma Treated?
You can control your asthma and avoid an attack by taking your medicine exactly as your doctor or other medical professional tells you to do and by avoiding things that can cause an attack.
Not everyone with asthma takes the same medicine. Some medicines can be inhaled, or breathed in, and some can be taken as a pill. Asthma medicines come in two types—quick relief and long-term control. Quick-relief medicines control the symptoms of an asthma attack. If you need to use your quick-relief medicines more and more, you should visit your doctor or other medical professional to see if you need a different medicine. Long-term control medicines help you have fewer and milder attacks, but they don’t help you if you’re having an asthma attack.
Asthma medicines can have side effects, but most side effects are mild and soon go away. Ask your doctor or other medical professional about the side effects of your medicines.
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The important thing to remember is that you can control your asthma. With your doctor’s or other medical professional’s help, make your own asthma action plan (management plan) so that you know what to do based on your own symptoms.
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