Asthma Research

With asthma becoming more prevalent – and more likely to be deadly – the National Institute of Environmental Health and Safety is focusing a great deal of its energy on asthma research. With 16 different projects and studies underway, the NIEHS may be the largest funder of asthma research currently working.

NIEHS has chosen to fund a broad spectrum of asthma studies. Because so much of the asthma research lately has pointed to environmental allergens as one of the major triggers of asthma symptoms, much of the asthma research sponsored by the agency targets ways to measure, reduce and study the effects of common household allergens like dust mites, cockroach parts, dust, rodent droppings and mold. In a number of the asthma research studies that have been completed, the results show that controlling the amount of allergens in the environment can be as effective a treatment for children who have asthma as providing them with asthma inhalers and nebulizers.

What does this asthma research mean for the future of asthma care? Forward thinking researchers are proposing that asthma intervention for families provide more than just medication. In one NIEHS study, the program provided specific items for the families of children diagnosed with allergen specific asthma. For some families, that meant giving them mattress covers and pillowcase covers. For others, the program provided HEPA filters for the bedrooms and other areas of the family home to remove dust and other particles from the air. The results? Children who had been part of the intervention group had substantially fewer acute asthma incidents and significantly more symptom free days. In practical rather than human terms, each symptom free day for each child saves the health care system $25, and children in the intervention group averaged 38 more symptom free days over the course of the two year study. Multiply those savings in health care costs by the millions of children with allergy induced asthma, and the reduction in health care costs for those children is staggering.

Other avenues of asthma research being explored include studies into the effects of genetics on asthma and participatory community studies to monitor the effects of community education on reducing the incidence of asthma community wide. This last is a particularly exciting avenue of research for those involved in population health. Education, in conjunction with reducing allergens in public buildings like schools and day cares, as well as providing the necessary equipment to manage the environments of affected children community wide can result in lowering the incidence of asthma hospitalizations for the entire community.

There are also others involved in asthma research to discover new drugs and interventions for acute asthma care and long term management, though the current options for medical care are generally seen as safe and effective.