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Loading ...Asthma is a chronic inflammatory condition that affects an astounding 300 million people worldwide: that’s equal to the United States population in 2006! While mild asthma can usually be controlled by avoiding airborne irritants and using of an inhaler, the constant threat of an asthma attack can make life miserable for the millions of people suffering from asthma.
Asthma Attacks
During an asthma attack three major things happen:
- Cells lining the respiratory track produce a thick and sticky mucus
- Airways become inflamed
- The muscles lining the airways constrict, or tighten
Even one of these symptoms can upset breathing, causing a person to wheeze or have painful breathing. But the combination of the three can be debilitating and kills an average of 200,000 people a year. To make matters worse, asthma sufferers often become more sensitive to environmental stimuli over time. So asthma attacks that could once be prevented by daily inhaler use could develop into more serious attacks, requiring a person to need their inhaler 4 or 5 times a day.
Like many immune-based maladies, there is no cure for asthma. Instead, those with asthma must focus on prevention and treatment of symptoms. Most suffers require a combination of the following:
- Identifying and avoiding triggers (foods, pet dander, pollen, etc)
- Use of an inhaler or nebulizer containing an anti-inflammatory/bronchodilator drug combination
Promising New Asthma Attack Sensor
Previous studies have revealed that nitric oxide levels in a person’s breath rise with increasingly inflamed airways. In fact, those with asthma have a spike of nitric oxide in their exhalations up to 3 weeks before suffering an asthma attack.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have recently developed a hand held sensor that can determine the levels of certain gases in a person’s breath, including nitric oxide. Much like a diabetic patient can monitor their blood-glucose level, asthmatics could potentially prevent asthma attacks by monitoring the nitric oxide levels in their breath.
How The Sensor Works:
When a person breathes into the sensor, a collection of carbon nanotubes – rolled sheets of graphite 100,000 times smaller than a human hair – respond to extremely small variations in the chemical environment. These variations can then be detected by an electrode, interpreted and then reported as gas concentrations.
Recognizing conditions for an asthma attack 3 weeks in advance could potentially save thousands of lives every year. Also, because nitric oxide is most commonly associated with inflammation, treatment could be more patient-specific, as not all asthmatics have the same degree of inflammation versus airway constriction.
Although the sensor has currently only been tested in the lab, human clinical trials will be proceeding shortly, meaning it is likely to be on the market in the next few years.
http://www.physorg.com/news107102621.html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=672
http://www.umm.edu/non_trauma/asthma.htm
http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=22583
Written by April Wilson for MicroNutra Health™