Applied Data Research Analyzes Emerging Therapeutics and Technologies for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Girls and children exposed to tobacco smoke respond particularly well to montelukast (Singulair) according to researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center. Associate Professor of Pediatrics Nathan Rabinovitch, MD, and his colleagues also identified two biomarkers that may help physicians predict even more precisely which patients will benefit from montelukast.

Among four year-olds attending Head Start programs in New York City, those who had older siblings were more likely to experience respiratory symptoms including an episode of wheezing in the past year than those who were oldest or only children.

For the first time, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have identified genetic components of dendritic cells that are key to asthma and allergy-related immune response malfunction. Targeting these elements could result in more effective drugs to treat allergic disorders and asthma, according to a study reported in the May edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

Two studies that offer new insights to help adolescents and younger children improve their asthma control will be presented by researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center at this year’s annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Society (PAS) in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Children who live in tree lined streets have lower rates of asthma, suggests research published ahead of print in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Obesity can worsen the impact of asthma and may also mask its severity in standard tests, according to researchers in New Zealand, who studied lung function in asthmatic women with a range of body mass indexes (BMIs).

Scientists at Johns Hopkins have outlined a new path for potential therapies to combat inflammation associated with sinusitis and asthma based on a new understanding of the body’s earliest immune response in the nose and sinus cavities.

A new study reports that inner-city children with asthma may be particularly vulnerable to air pollution at levels below current air quality standards. The study, available online today, analyzes the short-term effects of outdoor pollution levels on asthma symptoms and lung function in children. The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

When an asthma attack occurs, many sufferers use a device — a “spacer” — to increase the chances that rescue medicine travels from an inhaler all the way down to the airways where it is needed. A new review of studies found no difference between the effectiveness of commercially manufactured devices and homemade spacers — sometimes fashioned from a plastic soda bottle or a Styrofoam cup.

According to a study in Respirology published by Wiley-Blackwell, the prevalence of asthma among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children is similar to that of mainland Australian children – who have one of the highest asthma rates in the world.

Dry airways may not only play a central role in the development of the in-herited lung disease cystic fibrosis, but also in much more common ac-quired chronic lung diseases such as asthma and smoker’s lung, the ciga-rette smoke-induced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).