Discovery may lead to powerful new therapy for asthma. GALVESTON, Texas — University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have found that a single enzyme is apparently critical to most allergen-provoked asthma attacks — and that activity of the enzyme, known as aldose reductase, can be significantly reduced by compounds that have already undergone clinical trials as treatments for complications of diabetes. The discovery, made in experiments conducted with mice and in human cell cultures, opens the way to human tests of a powerful new treatment for asthma, which today afflicts more than 20 million Americans. Such a development would provide a badly needed alternative to current asthma therapy, which primarily depends on hard-to-calibrate inhaled doses of corticosteroids and bronchodilators, which have a number of side effects.
Aldose reductase plays an essential part in the activation of the cellular machinery that produces inflammatory proteins in these diseases, the Srivastava group discovered. THC - cuts tumor growth by 50% THC - Positive effects during pregnancy. To Our Faithful Current.com Users: Current's run has ended after eight exciting years on air and online. The Current TV staff has appreciated your interest, support, participation and unflagging loyalty over the years.
Your contributions helped make Current.com a vibrant place for discussing thousands of interesting stories, and your continued viewership motivated us to keep innovating and find new ways to reflect the voice of the people. We now welcome the on-air and digital presence of Al Jazeera America, a new news network committed to reporting on and investigating real stories affecting the lives of everyday Americans in every corner of the country. You can keep up with what's new on Al Jazeera America and see this new brand of journalism for yourself at Thank you for inspiring and challenging us.
. – The Current TV Staff. Allergies: Hookworm. I have had severe allergies all of my life. As a child I had hay fever so bad that my eyes would swell shut and mucus would stream from my nose. I would lie in a darkened room with a cold damp flannel over my face to quell the itching, almost inebriate from antihistamines. Spring was pure misery. Later I smoked cigarettes for seven years when I was a teenager and into my early twenties. As my asthma got worse I became increasingly reliant on inhalers, pills and antihistamines as well as upon the oral steroid prednisone to stay out of hospital.
My use of prednisone increased, and as you may know the side affects of prednisone are quite horrible, particularly with long-term use. Soon I was denied health insurance and so now I had the added burden of paying for all my medical care. On a trip in the summer of 2004 to visit relatives in England I learned of a BBC documentary about the connection between a variety of intestinal parasites and various autoimmune diseases. Some Links: How it works. Asthma: Bitter compounds relax airways. Your lungs know a bitter sensation when they taste one. Yes, taste. In a Nature Medicine study, Stephen B. Liggett and company found receptors on the smooth muscle in the lungs that respond to bitterness, similar to the bitter taste buds on the tongue.
And, Liggett found, the receptors’ reaction to bitterness is to relax the muscles, and therefore to expand airways. That was totally unexpected, he says, and opens intriguing possibilities for pulmonary treatment—for example, asthmatic symptoms could be treated by exposing these receptors to bitter compounds. Like tastebuds on the tongue, the receptors react to bitterness, but unlike tastebuds they do not send any signals to the brain.
The researchers first thought that bitter compounds might trigger a constriction of the airways, to prevent toxins from further infiltrating the lungs. The team’s discovery doesn’t point to a cure for asthma. Image: iStockphoto.