During an asthmatic attack, smooth muscles encircling the lung's airways constrict, causing the normally smooth layer of epithelial cells lining the airways to invaginate and bunch up on themselves, producing a corrugated appearance (above). The mechanical forces produced by the compression of the epithelial cells (see arrows below) cause the cells to upregulate genes that lead, ultimately, to airway stiffening. Courtesy of Jeffrey Drazen |
Breathing new life into asthma therapyResearchers argue for prescribing muscle relaxants in addition to anti-inflammatoriesJune 8, 2001Asthma attacks have lasting effects because the lungs' most delicate airways can become scarred. This makes future attacks all the worse. Researchers at Harvard Medical School have looked at what happens during asthma attacks, and believe that the damage to airways can be prevented or lessened by prescribing muscle relaxants in addition to anti-inflammatory steroids. Prescribing muscle relaxants is actually an old asthma therapy that was discarded two decades ago in favor of anti-inflammatory steroid treatments. The supplanting of one therapy by another has caused some physicians in the United States to resist the idea of combining the drugs, though such combined therapies — steroids and muscle relaxants in the same inhaler — are already used in Europe. |
