How To Prevent From Asthma Attacks?
Posted on March 10, 2008
Filed Under News, Prevention | Leave a Comment
“A severe respiratory infection in infancy greatly increases the risk of developing asthma,” says the study’s lead author Mitchell Grayson, M.D., assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Allergy and Immunology. “Less than one in 30 people who don’t suffer a severe respiratory infection as a baby develop asthma, but of those who do get these infections, one in five goes on to have asthma.” The key to preventing asthma attacks and better asthma control is to avoid your known asthma triggers. We have some basic tips on how to avoid your triggers. Keep your asthma symptoms at bay with these helpful asthma prevention techniques.
Preventive medications don’t work immediately, but may take weeks or months before they are really effective. So it is very important for the child to stick with them - and to take them regularly. If doses are skipped the asthma is likely to get worse. If medication is taken regularly, most children can keep their asthma under control. Even though they won’t be “cured,” they should be free of symptoms most of the time.
Taken properly, preventative medications should make the child’s life much easier. But it is still important to avoid the triggers and irritants that bring on asthma attacks. Read more
Asthma explained by common allergy to milk and dairy products
Posted on March 9, 2008
Filed Under Allergies, Dairy, News | 1 Comment
by Dani Veracity
The link between asthma and cows’ milk is familiar to many young asthma sufferers and their parents. I first became aware of the connection through my cousin’s experiences with his four-year-old son. Since infancy, my cousin’s son has experienced severe asthma attacks and has been hospitalized twice for asthma-related pneumonia. When his asthma attacks become more frequent or more severe, my cousin and his wife respond by temporarily eliminating milk and milk products from his diet, and it usually works. I always assumed that milk worsened his asthma by stimulating mucus production in his lungs. However, studies suggest that, either along with or instead of creating excess mucus, milk may worsen asthma due to an undiagnosed milk allergy.
“In all respiratory conditions, mucous-forming dairy foods, such as milk and cheese, can exacerbate clogging of the lungs and should be avoided,” writes Professor Gary Null in his Complete Encyclopedia of Natural Healing. Very simply, when more mucus accumulates in the lungs than can be expelled, asthma attacks develop. This belief has long been held in practiced medicine, and many medical doctors still stand behind this theory.
At the same time, many other doctors and researchers are now beginning to feel that undiagnosed milk allergies may be the underlying problem behind the link between milk and asthma. As Dr. Robert M. Giller writes in Natural Prescriptions, eliminating dairy products from the diets of many adult and child asthma patients helps “not because dairy products stimulate mucus production but because they’re very common causes of allergy, upper-respiratory allergies and asthma (which may be an allergy in itself).” Read more
Serevent really is the ‘true asthma miracle drug’
Posted on March 8, 2008
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Today I wish to channel my energy better than I did in my previous post. Today I wish to talk to you from an asthmatic/RT perspective. The topic for today is Serevent and Advair. What I write about today should not only benifit asthma patients and parents, but provide useful information for RTs and Drs as well.
Serevent really is the ‘true asthma miracle drug’, and while I had trouble taking it at first, I discovered a method of actually weaning myself onto it, and my asthma has never been better. Before I go into more detail, bear with me here, because I’m going to give you a bit of background.
First off, I want you to know that Advair is a combination of Flovent and Serevent, and in this post I do not intend to talk much about the Flovent part of Advair, but I will have no choice but to mention it briefly. In general, this post is about Serevent whether you get it by itself or in a combination with Flovent.
Serevent has been around for more than ten years now. It’s a medicine that acts as a long acting bronchodilator and is used to prevent asthma attacks, and is not to be used as a rescue drug. Some people have used it as a rescue drug, and I think that’s how Serevent gets a bad rap in the media at times. When used appropriately, Serevent is a very safe and effective drug.
Augusta Families, University Hospital Work To Raise Childhood Asthma Awareness
Posted on March 6, 2008
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Augusta, GA — Eleven-year-old Carissa Taylor was full of life. She loved to play outside and had a ton of friends at Diamond Lakes Elementary, but she suffered from asthma, a disease that would eventually take her life.
Lori Taylor, Carissa’s mother: “The unusual thing about it was that she had asthma, but she played so much. You know most kids who have asthma, they can’t play a lot because of short breath or whatever, well this child could play.”
Carissa was one of the 75,000 kids who suffer from asthma in Georgia. Although she never made a hospital visit, 5-year-old Nicholas Ister has. His grandma says it can be tough living in Augusta, because of the high levels of pollen and ragweed….all triggers of attacks.
Donna Plummer, Nicholas’ grandmother: “Just the idea of going outside to play becomes something that you really have to monitor. You have to check out and see what the pollen count is for the day.”
In 2007, University Hospital’s emergency room saw more than 460 kids under the age of 18, due to asthma attacks…a number that Cardio-Pulmonary Rehab Specialist, Sheila Kamath, says could be lowered.
ASTHMA DEATH BOY HAD ‘TOUCHED LIVES OF SO MANY PEOPLE’
Posted on March 5, 2008
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A teenage boy died after suffering an asthma attack at his brother’s home, an inquest heard.Brandon Jennings, 13, a student at Tiverton High School, died on October 27 after collapsing at the home of his older brother Casey Wheeler, in Lime Road, Tiverton.Brandon, described by school principal Andrew Lovett as a boy “fizzing with energy and fun” who had “touched the lives of so many people”, had a history of the illness, an inquest at Cullompton heard yesterday.
He had been admitted to hospital on several occasions, but since an acute attack in 2003, he had not required medical attention. In a short statement read out by Exeter and Greater Devon coroner Dr Elizabeth Earland, Brandon’s mother, Trudi Wheeler said: “The attack that led to his death was very sudden and unexpected.”
Brandon, who lived at Escot House, in High Street, Cullompton, was visiting his brother’s home when he became ill.Mr Wheeler, in a statement read out in court, said they were about to settle down to watch a television programme just before 9pm, when Brandon called out from upstairs.“He was shouting that he couldn’t breathe,” said Mr Wheeler.
He said that he rushed to get Brandon’s nebuliser machine and went upstairs to help his younger brother.
But when he got to him, Brandon “was purple and was not breathing”.
Aerocrine Soars Most Ever on FDA Approval for Asthma Treatment
Posted on March 4, 2008
Filed Under FDA, News | Leave a Comment
By Jakob Lindstroem
March 4 (Bloomberg) — Aerocrine AB, the Swedish developer of airway inflammation detection equipment, surged the most ever in Stockholm trading after gaining approval to sell an asthma product in the U.S.
Aerocrine rose as much as 11.4 kronor, or 84 percent, to 25 kronor, and traded at 24.5 kronor as of 10:28 a.m. That values the Solna, Sweden-based company at 1.13 billion kronor ($183 million). The shares began trading in June.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the sale of Niox Mino product in the U.S., Aerocrine said in an e-mailed statement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jakob Lindstroem in Stockholm at jlindstroem@bloomberg.net.
Indoor allergens trigger asthma attacks
Posted on March 4, 2008
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The study showed that 52 percent of homes surveyed had at least six detectable allergens with 46 percent having three or more allergens at increased levels, Sciencedaily reported.
Indoor allergens are of ‘great importance in relation to asthma because most people spend a majority of their time at home’, said Darryl Zeldin of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the paper’s co-author.
Asthma, which afflicts a staggering number of people worldwide, is triggered by a range of substances - and these allergens are common at home thanks to the presence of dogs, cats, mice, cockroaches, dust mites and fungi.
Significantly, the study showed that homes with children were less likely to have high allergen levels. The authors ascribed this to the greater frequency of cleaning, a simple yet cost-effective method to remove allergens.
The findings of the study have been published in the latest issue of the Journal of Allergy and amp; Clinical Immunology.
The study, which surveyed 2,500 US homes across 75 locations, was the first to characterise how allergen exposures vary in homes.
Several factors were found to contribute to increased concentrations of allergens, including race, income, type of home, and sources of allergens, such as presence of pets and pests.
According to Pivi Salo, co-author of the study: ‘This study confirms that indoor allergens play a major role in asthma’.
Salo and her co-authors, however, point out that more research is needed to understand the complex relationships between genetic and environmental factors that cause asthma.
Pediatric asthma linked to traffic
Posted on March 3, 2008
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Children who live close to traffic-clogged roads are more likely to have asthma than children who live farther from heavily traveled streets, according to a new state report that focuses on six Merrimack Valley communities.
The report also states that the prevalence of asthma in children in Andover, Dracut, Haverhill, Lawrence, Methuen, and North Andover combined was 9.4 percent, compared with 7.7 percent in 15 control communities across the state.
Local officials said the study results could spur the Merrimack Valley communities and the state to do more to curtail asthma - a scourge affecting about 17.3 million Americans, including 5 million children nationwide, the report states. “I’ll be more cognizant as we consider new development,” Thomas Schiavone, Lawrence’s economic development director, said last week. “We really need to do anything we can to alleviate childhood asthma.”
The research, conducted from 1998 to 2001, had two parts. One compared the number of asthma cases among 34,000 children ages 5 to 14 against the distance of their homes from a road, at five intervals from 25 meters to 200 meters away, and the road’s traffic volume, or average number of automobiles, trucks, and buses traveling on it daily.
At each distance, children with asthma were consistently found to live nearer to a greater volume of traffic than those without the disease. The study also found that the risk for asthma decreased the farther away a child lived from the road. Dracut did not figure in this part of the research.
“This finding stresses the importance of programs to reduce gaseous pollutants and particulates from vehicles,” the report by the state Bureau of Environmental Health says.
Final interpretation and release of the findings had to wait until this year because of state budget cuts in 2002, said Suzanne Condon, director of the state bureau and the report’s author.
The study did not evaluate how low the traffic volume would have to be, or how far away a child would have to live, to eliminate asthma risk.
In separate tests, researchers also compared asthma rates among 37,000 children in all six Merrimack Valley communities with the rates among an equal number of children in 15 communities across the state similar in socio-demographic characteristics.
The prevalence of childhood asthma ranged from 6.5 to 12.2 percent in the Merrimack Valley communities, with the highest percentage in Lawrence, the report states.
Pediatric asthma ranged from 4.5 to 14.1 percent in the comparison communities of Chelsea, East Bridgewater, Easthampton, Grafton, Hingham, Holbrook, Leicester, Marshfield, Medfield, Melrose, Seekonk, Somerset, Somerville, Swansea, and Wakefield.
Reacting to the findings, which were released Feb. 19, North Andover Town Manager Mark Rees said only the state can regulate tailpipe emissions and highway construction.
Rees also said the inability to clamp down on traffic at the local level relates to ever-greater strains on municipal budgets that cry out for tax-producing commercial development.
“Under Proposition 2 1/2, the only way you can try to survive is to foster economic development,” Rees said. “Transportation infrastructure is critical” in those projects.
Condon said communities should try to “design development projects in a way that keeps children farthest away from higher-density traffic areas.”
Condon said her agency has been working with the state Highway Department and other agencies on so-called smart growth, to try to persuade private developers to use health data in planning. Smart growth developments encourage the use of public transportation and walking, instead of cars.
The state Department of Environmental Protection also awards grants to communities to help them retrofit municipal vehicles with devices to help reduce tailpipe emissions. Spokesman Joe Ferson said the agency aims to underwrite retrofitting all school buses in the state by 2010.
Rees said his town has received a $5,000 grant to reduce tailpipe emissions from a front-end loader. He said the device cuts down respiratory-health-damaging emissions of fine particulates by 25 percent, and carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons by 60 percent.
Milagro Grullón, Lawrence’s neighborhood planner, said the city is applying for similar grants.
Condon said communities can take other steps to protect children from harmful emissions.
For example, when planning school athletic facilities, developers should locate outdoor playing fields as far away from busy roads as possible, she said. Another suggestion is to allow children on an outdoor playground at times other than rush-hour.
Schools should also keep parents from stacking up outside schools in idling cars at drop-off or pickup time. She said state anti-idling law prohibits operation of a stationary motor vehicle for more than five minutes.
Many schools are built so that air-intake systems are too close to truck loading docks - a situation that should be avoided, she said.
It was after local activists expressed concern about air pollution that the research got started in 1998. They were worried about possible health effects from five municipal solid- and medical-waste incinerators operating within 2.5 miles of each other in the Merrimack Valley, along with a medical-waste plant in downtown Lawrence.
Researchers initially probed whether air pollution was contributing to a high rate of breast cancer. When no correlation was found, they turned their attention to respiratory diseases.
School nurses were asked to provide the number of children in kindergarten through eighth grade who had been diagnosed with asthma in all public and private schools in the research communities.
Researchers compared the children’s addresses with proximity to incinerators and major roads, correlated with weather patterns. Privacy and other laws prevented researchers from getting the addresses of all the children, and Dracut did not participate in this part of the study.
The report surprised some local officials, particularly since they had expected that the area’s incinerators would have proved to be the chief cause of the illness, and not traffic. Instead, the report said that incinerators in operation from 1999 to 2001, when most of the data were collected, “did not appear to be major contributors” to pediatric asthma. “It’s definitely a little surprising,” said Brian LaGrasse, Methuen’s health director.
Many local officials said they had not yet read the report, but want to follow up.
“We’ll be looking at it and any recommendations and any scientific data so that we can provide some support and education for the community in order to address this concern,” said Dracut’s public health nurse, Ronald Mote.
The report also indicates that factors beyond traffic might have contributed to the area’s high rate of pediatric asthma, including such indoor exposures as household mold and cigarette smoke.
LaGrasse said he would encourage the state to undertake more research on indoor-air pollution. Then, he said, official results could be compared with similar initiatives in other regions and states.
The state public health agency met with Lawrence officials on Feb. 19 to discuss the asthma findings. The results are set to be shared with the region’s public health and healthcare officials at a conference in April.
Connie Paige can be reached at cpaige@globe.com.
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