Newcastle team makes asthma breakthrough
A breakthrough in asthma research by a team of clinicians at the University of Newcastle could lead to more effective treatments for sufferers.
Currently similar treatments are used for asthma attacks regardless of whether they are caused by a virus or allergens, but virus-induced attacks are less responsive to current therapies.
Researchers have spent several years tracking the mechanisms that trigger airway inflammation and cause asthma attacks.
Team leader and respiratory specialist, Professor Joerg Mattes says the research has found important molecular signals which are generated very early in the disease process.
He says it makes sense to target those early signals, rather than the hundreds of downstream effects.
"We believe it will generate an innovative platform that allows us as well as others to now develop better treatments and optimal drugs that we can then further investigate in clinical trials with asthma patients," he said.
Professor Mattes says his research team is now testing therapeutic strategies, which will allow for the development of targeted drugs.
"In pre-taker disease models when we modulate those pathways with appropriate drugs that we then can have a protection against the development of those allergen, as well as virus-induced diseased features, that are seen in asthma."
"Asthma results in more than 30,000 hospitalisations per year in Australia alone, many of which are children, and we know that two-thirds of these asthma attacks are caused by viruses."
Professor Mattes' team is publishing its results today in the biomedical journal, Nature Medicine.