Antibiotic could relieve virus-triggered asthma
01 March 2010

Scientists have discovered that a standard antibiotic might one day be an effective treatment for virally-triggered asthma symptoms.

90% of people with asthma say that colds and flu triggers their asthma, but there is currently no treatment available that specifically combats virally-triggered asthma symptoms.

Professor Sebastian Johnston, Dr Michael Edwards and Ms Vera Gielen at the National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London and the MRC-Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma, grew human cells taken from the lining of the airways in the laboratory and deliberately infected them with human rhinovirus.

They found that one antibiotic, called Azithromycin, was able to boost the cells’ anti-viral response and reduced the ability of the virus particles to multiply.

This suggests that Azithromycin might be a possible future treatment for virally-triggered asthma symptoms, although this will need testing in controlled trials involving people with asthma.

Asthma UK Research Fellow Dr Michael Edwards, who led this study, said: ‘This is an exciting result. We’ve been able to demonstrate that macrolide antibiotics have novel, direct, anti-viral effects, and therefore may have other useful properties as well as anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties.

‘However, whether the effects of Azithromycin are strong enough and specific enough for it to be used to treat asthma remains to be seen.’

Dr Elaine Vickers, Research Relations Manager at Asthma UK, said: ‘Millions of people in the UK suffer from worse asthma symptoms whenever they catch a cold.

‘This work, which builds on previous Asthma UK-funded research, could represent an important step towards finding effective anti-virus treatments for people with asthma.’

Professor Johnston showed in previous Asthma UK-funded research that a similar antibiotic, Telithromycin, could help people with asthma recover from virally-triggered symptoms.

This latest research was published online in the European Respiratory Journal on 11 February 2010.