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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

New asthma cause found; may lead to new meds

Health.usnews.com, "Potential Cause of Asthma-Like Symptoms Spotted in Mice," reports that scientists have discovered the cause of asthma in mice, and this might some day prove to be a useful way of treating asthma in adults.

The post notes that researchers now believe "that an inflammation-causing protein called interleukin-17 (IL-17A) is the major cause of severe asthma-like symptoms in mice. The animals used in the study had been bred to have a genetic resemblance to humans with severe susceptibility to asthma."

This is key, because if researchers can somehow develop a medicine to block IL-17A pathways, they might be able to better treat severe forms of asthma.

Of course we must not get too excited here, because animal studies do not always translate to humans. Yet it's progress nonetheless.

1 comment:

hearts said...

I'm not sure what's scarier...mice who are kind of human and can probably learn to speak or asthma...anyway my aunt has it, hope they figure it out soon, it looks like it really sucks!