Airway discovery could lead to new treatments
07 January 2009

Researchers funded by Asthma UK have uncovered vital new information about the cause of many asthma symptoms, which could lead to the development of new treatments.

Around half a million people in the UK suffer the debilitating effects of severe asthma, and often receive little or no relief from standard asthma treatments. An important feature of severe asthma is narrowing of the lungs’ airways due to thickening of the airway wall. People affected feel breathless and wheezy on a daily basis, massively disrupting their daily lives.

Dr Christopher Brightling and colleagues at the University of Leicester have discovered that specific cells in the blood, called fibrocytes, move into the airways of people with asthma. They also discovered a potential reason why, showing that fibrocytes are attracted by a chemical ‘scent’ secreted by airway cells. Following this scent, fibrocytes leave the bloodstream and move into muscle bundles in the airway wall.

The researchers found the highest numbers of blood fibrocytes in the airways of people with the most severe asthma symptoms.

This opens the possibility that targeting fibrocytes might be a new way to reverse airway wall thickening and relieve the symptoms of asthma.

Fibrocytes are known to play a key role in healing - helping our skin to recover quickly from cuts and scrapes. However in asthma they appear to have a detrimental effect, causing an exaggerated repair process that leads to airway wall thickening, breathlessness and wheeze.

Dr Brightling now aims to investigate exactly how fibrocyte numbers affect lung function, the severity of symptoms and the effectiveness of different treatments. He hopes to uncover information that will free many thousands of people from the debilitating effects of severe asthma.

Dr Elaine Vickers, Research Relations Manager at Asthma UK commented: ‘Severe asthma can be a distressing and dangerous condition, affecting every aspect of a person’s life. That’s why we’re committed to funding research such as this, which we hope will one day lead to new treatments for severe asthma that help more people lead active lives.’

This research was published online in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in December 2008.