Asthma « Pharmacy blogs, Pharmacy News, Pharmaceutical Products, Health care news

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March 14, 2011

Asthma alertness Helps Prevent Rush

Filed under: Asthma — Tags: Asthma basic symptoms, asthma emergency, breathing problems, children with asthma, extreme weather conditions, perfume or scented soap — martin @ 5:36 am

Asthma is becoming much more common and people should know and respond to the basic symptoms before they are faced with a potentially life-threatening attack. Each day, thousands of people end up in the ER because of poorly controlled asthma. Many don’t understand that asthma is a chronic condition that needs to be managed regularly.

Triggers that can make asthma worse include: smoke; dust mites, pollen and mold; perfume or scented soap; respiratory infections; and extreme weather conditions. According to the ACEP, recognizing and responding to the following warning signs can help people avoid an asthma emergency:

Wheezing and/or coughing that disturb sleep at night.
Having to use a quick-relief inhaler more than twice a week.
Taking time off from work or school due to breathing problems.
Consistently having trouble breathing during physical activity.
Inability to take part in normal, everyday activities.
Needing urgent or emergency care.

It’s especially important for parents to recognize these warning signs in children with asthma. According to the CDC, and asthmatic episodes account for 17 percent of children seen in emergency departments. It’s a serious disease but it’s treatable, if you consult with your doctors and manage it properly.

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November 9, 2010

Asthma related to Lung Cancer threat

Filed under: Asthma — Tags: aggressive management, asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, risk for developing lung cancer, risk stratification, scarring of lung tissue — martin @ 3:34 pm

A correlation between Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and lung cancer, but this is the first time such a link has been shown for asthma and lung cancer. However, based on the available data, people with asthma should not worry that they are at an increased risk for developing lung cancer.

The problem with correlation studies is you never get cause-and-effect. Still, it’s of interest. The team examined the medical records of 759 lung cancer patients and similar patients without lung cancer.

The researchers found that 46.2 percent of those with asthma also had lung cancer, compared with 22.5 percent of those without asthma.

The researchers speculate that chronic repeated inflammatory insults from asthma could trigger lung cancer, but exactly how that might happen remains unclear, underscores the importance of more aggressive management of inflammatory airway disease, development of diagnostics for early and ideally noninvasive screening and risk stratification, and promotion of additional research on the mechanisms of carcinogenesis induced by inflammation.

Asthma and COPD scar the lungs; lung cancer is not caused by scarring of lung tissue. Also, she said it doesn’t appear that the researchers took into account smoking, which is a major cause of lung cancer.

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October 7, 2010

Mother’s strain obstruction May get worse Child’s Asthma

Filed under: Asthma — Tags: a worsening of asthma, asthma symptoms, chronic irritation, negative emotions, parenting styles — martin @ 10:54 pm

A mother’s negative emotions or behavior can worsen the severity of her child’s asthma. From the Japanese researchers followed 223 mothers for a year in order to assess how their stress levels, coping skills and parenting styles influenced asthma symptoms in their children, aged 2 to 12 years old.

Among children older than 7 years of age, a worsening of asthma was associated with mother’s excessive interference due to being overprotective.

Among children younger than 7, more severe asthma symptoms were associated with mothers’ chronic irritation and anger or a tendency to suppress expressions of emotion, the investigators found.

A mother’s stress (or well-being) may be verbally or non-verbally conveyed to her child, and affect the child’s asthmatic status via a psycho-physiological pathway, such as by immunoreactivity to allergens or a vulnerability to airway infections.

Our results suggest that the mothers of younger children may be advised not to worry about falling into ‘unfavorable’ parenting styles, but to pay more attention to the reduction of their own stress; and that the mothers of older children may be encouraged to increase their own happiness.

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