The June 28, 2004 Baltimore Sun published a general interest article on asthma, pointing out that between 1980 and 1996, the number of asthma cases in the United States has nearly doubled. The article says that the CDC estimates that 16 million or 1 in 12 people suffer from the disease. The article goes on to say that while the causes of asthma remain unclear, what is known is that it “disproportionately affects children and minorities, kills 5,000 people a year in the United States and costs the nation $6 billion a year for treatment.” In addition, while many people with asthma seem to inherit the disease from a parent, other people have no genetic predisposition. As such, determining a cause has proven difficult because of the variety of symptoms and triggers and the various ways the lungs and immune system responds to stress. The article quotes Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical adviser for the American Lung Association, on the complexities of the immune system in relation to asthma.
The article discusses various research projects focused on asthma, beginning with a study conducted at Yale University and published in the June 11th issue of Science, which found that chitinase, an enzyme that attacks the protective coatings on shellfish, may help treat asthma and that blocking chitinase in mice with asthma drastically cut lung inflammation. According to the article, the Yale researchers also found that in humans chitinase was not present in healthy lungs but did appear in the lungs of people with asthma. The article also discusses a study out of the University of Southern California, which examined the health records of 3,500 children who played outdoors in Southern California in 2002. According to the article, the study found that children in high-ozone areas more susceptible to asthma. Finally, the article discusses a 2001 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found that a ban on car traffic in downtown Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics lead to a 44 percent decline in asthma-related treatments in hospitals and health care centers.
For the entire article: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-te.ms.asthma28jun28,0,6185845.story?coll=bal-health-headlines.
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