Asthma

One Hundred Years of Treatment and Onward

Eric K. Chu, and Jeffrey M. Drazen

Source: http://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10.1164/rccm.200502257OE#.WBiKVPp97Dd

Asthma is a condition of the bronchial tubes characterized by

episodes of constriction and increased mucous production. A person
with asthma has bronchial tubes that are super sensitive to various
stimuli, or triggers, that can produce asthma symptom.
In other words, asthmatics have special sensitivity that causes
their lung tissue to react far more than is should to various stimulating
factors or triggers. For this reason, people with asthma are said to have
"twitchy airways."
Some symptoms that people with asthma commonly
experience are chest tightenings, difficulty inhaling and exhaling,
wheezing, production of large amounts of mucous in their windpipes
and coughing.
Coughing can be frequent or intermittent, and can be loosereflecting extra mucous secretion in the airways or dry and deepreflecting tight bronchospasms. Not all these symptoms occur in every
case of asthma.
Sometimes people may have coughing without and symptoms
for months or even years before it's realized that they are asthmatic.
Interestingly enough, asthma symptoms are most severe at night,
while we're lying down our airways narrow as a result of gravity
changes. Also our lungs do not clear secretions as well at night, which
leads to mucous retention, and that can increase the obstruction to air
flow. Furthermore, at night our bodies produce smaller amounts of
certain chemical that help to decrease airway spasms and keep airway
tubes open. All of these factors add up to a greater chance of
symptoms worsening at night.
Asthma is an extremely important disease to learn about for
several reasons. It is common, affecting young and old. Its prevalence
is increasing too. It can lead to a terrible quality of life, and can kill. In
addition, it has an extremely interesting pathophysiology that

highlights an incredible degree of interplay of many different factors,

and a great deal of what a theist like myself would regard as incredible
intelligent design. All of these make it one of the most interesting
diseases to discuss; it is a great cause of reflection.