May is a great month to renew your commitment to asthma, as we mark National Asthma and Allergy Awareness Month and World Asthma Day on the 7th. Media will be looking for stories to cover, so give them a call and invite them out to your facility to see all the good things…
More attention should be given to patients who have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and concomitant asthma, after a study showed that nearly one-fifth of patients with COPD fall into this subtype. Patients with overlap of the two conditions experienced poorer symptom control, had lower quality of life (QoL), and took part in…
Researchers surveyed the parents of 80,000 children in one of six languages and found that association held even after they took into account where families lived and how often they moved, as well as their race and income. “This is definitely something we see clinically and we’re trying to better understand, what is…
If you’re among the 27 million North Americans with asthma, chances are it’s triggered by allergies to airborne irritants in your environment (a whopping 75 percent of adults with sensitive airways have allergic asthma). Unfortunately, only 25 percent of people with asthma know what they’re allergic to and how to avoid the triggers that…
Children with asthma should play hard in gym class and stop worrying they might have an attack that could leave them struggling to breathe, respiratory specialists are now recommending. Physical activity by people with asthma isn’t harmful and might even be helpful to treating the condition, doctors in the field believe. A report…
Spirometry, the most common type of pulmonary function test (PFT), is used to evaluate worker respiratory health in medical surveillance programs and to screen workers for their ability to perform certain tasks. Spirometry results can play a central role in decisions about worker job assignments and personal protective equipment, and in the assessment of…
Newcastle researchers say they have found a link between asthma and oestrogen in young obese women. The Hunter Medical Research Institute’s Hayley Scott says oestrogen stimulates leptin, a hormone that regulates hunger, but also promotes airway inflammation. A study of 130 people found younger females tended to show a more hormone-related pattern…
More than 25 million American children, adolescents and adults currently have a diagnosis of asthma. Previously it was thought that underlying allergies were only prevalent in children with allergies. In fact, almost 80 percent of children with asthma have underlying allergies, so perhaps that was not necessarily the case with adults with…