The New England Journal of Medicine recently published a report showing that almost one-third of adults and children hospitalize with the H1N1 swine flu have asthma. That makes asthma the top chronic condition that makes having the H1N1 swine flu even more complicated and potentially deadly.

Asthma triggers are everywhere and some cities are more apt to be challenging for asthma sufferers to live. St. Louis, Missouri has been named the top Asthma Capital 2009 in the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America's annual ranking of the 100 most challenging places to live with asthma.

Asthma, nasal symptoms and eczema is a major public health problem in Sweden, not least among young people. Half of all teenagers are affected in Västra Götaland County in West Sweden. This is shown in a study conducted in 2008 by the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, on the request of the Public Health Committee, Region Västra Götaland. The study also shows that the prevalence of allergies among young people has increased by ten percentage points since the year 2000.

As the health care reform debate turns to cutting costs and improving treatment outcomes, two professors at Southern Methodist University in Dallas are expanding a study that shows promise for reducing both the expense and suffering associated with chronic asthma.

New research hints that the common belief that kids who go to daycare have lower rates of asthma and allergy later in life might be nothing more than wishful thinking. While young children in daycare definitely do get more illnesses and experience more respiratory symptoms as a result, any perceived protection these exposures afford against asthma and allergy seem to disappear by the time the child hits the age of eight.

Genetic variants in a region on chromosome 9q may influence asthma development in Mexican children, according to research published in the August 28 issue of the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.

Mayo Clinic Proceedings published a peer-reviewed comparative effectiveness study performed by HealthCore, Inc. in its August edition. The study demonstrated that asthma patients in general had better clinical outcomes with oral controllers than inhaled corticosteroids.

University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have found that a single enzyme is apparently critical to most allergen-provoked asthma attacks — and that activity of the enzyme, known as aldose reductase, can be significantly reduced by compounds that have already undergone clinical trials as treatments for complications of diabetes.

Because of increased risk of complications from influenza, vaccination of adults and children with asthma is recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The Healthy People 2010 Objectives call for annual influenza vaccination of at least 60% of adults aged 18-64 years with asthma.

Neighborhoods with restaurants, entertainment, cultural facilities and ethnic diversity have lower Childhood Asthma rates in the city of Chicago than neighborhoods where residents are less likely to move, and where there are more churches and not-for-profit facilities.

Being overweight or obese does not make asthma worse in patients with mild and moderate forms of the disease, according to a study by National Jewish Health researchers, although it may reduce the response to medications.