Posted by Sue Landsman on Jun.17, 2009

©iStockphoto.com - Sebastien Kaulitzki

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 9.1 % of children in the United states, or 6.7 million, have asthma. It is a condition which profoundly affects quality of life and in many cases is life-threatening. For many children, coughing, wheezing and a scary tightness in the chest is a common occurrence, staved off only with careful attention and an inhaler.

A recent study by a research team at the Washington University School of Medicine suggests that there may be a way to identify early on which children are at risk for developing asthma. In addition, the team may have found out how to prevent these children from suffering from the disease at all. What’s the key? A connection between Eczema and Asthma.

Eczema is an allergic reaction characterized by inflamed and irritated skin. It causes scaly red patches and itchy areas, and shows up mainly on the face, knees, hands and feet. According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, it is common in infants and young children. Most children outgrow their skin condition by the time they’re two, but 50 to 70 percent of these children go on to develop asthma. Compared to the 9.1% occurrence in the general population, this is huge.

The correlation between eczema and asthma in children has been well documented but, until recently, not explained. The progression has been recognized well enough to be called the “atopic march,” as if it were an inexorable process. The word “atopic” refers to diseases that often occur together and run in families. Eczema is commonly called “atopic dermatitis,” which basically means a somewhat hereditary inflammation of the skin.

The researchers discovered that in mice, skin damaged by eczema produced a substance called thymic stromal lymphopoietin. TSLP, for short, has also been found in the lungs of human asthma patients. “When we found that the skin of mice with an eczema-like condition produced a substance previously implicated in asthma, we decided to investigate further,” said Raphael Kopan, Ph.D., in a press release. Kopan is a professor of developmental biology and dermatology and an author of the study.

While TSLP has been implicated in asthma before, no one had found, as it were, the smoking gun. It’s one thing to suggest that something is the cause of a condition, and another to have real proof. The Washington University researchers showed in their mice that TSLP is necessary and sufficient to cause severe asthma-like symptoms. “We are excited, because we’ve narrowed down the problem of atopic march to one molecule,” Kopan said. In the mice, the damaged skin signalled its distress by producing TSLP, which then activated their immune systems, specifically causing allergic inflammation in the lungs.

As with any study conducted with mice as a human model, the benefit to humans will be a ways down the line. But studies such as this give scientists a better direction to pursue in their efforts to find clinical treatments or to develop new drugs. In this case, they’re guessing that if children with eczema are treated early so that TSLP production is limited, or even blocked, that might be enough to stave off the later development of asthma. Also, it might be possible to develop a drug that binds or otherwise deactivates TSLP. Such a drug might be useful for protection against asthma even in children who have not previously had eczema.

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Posted under Health & Fitness, Health Alerts.