A new fundamental cause of severe asthma has been discovered by researchers at the University of Bath’s Department of Pharmacy & Pharmacology, this finding could help develop a new treatment that could potentially prevent the 1,100 asthma-related deaths in the UK each year. The report is published in the world’s leading allergy journal, the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Around the world approximately 300 million individuals suffer from asthma, one of the most prevalent allergic diseases. The disease is connected to the closure of airways in response to environmental factors, leading to difficulty breathing.

Inhaled medication can be used to treat the majority of individuals with asthma, however, roughly 5-10% of patients do not respond to this treatment, these patients are classified as severe asthmatics and are more likely to suffer from asthma attacks, resulting in hospitalization and sometimes death.

Professor Mark Lindsay, from the Department of Pharmacy & Pharmacology, explained:

“Our research team has identified a novel mechanism that might underlie severe asthma.

In collaboration with researchers from Imperial College, the University of Manchester and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, we have found that patients with severe asthma show activation of a specific group of immune cells, called CD8+ T-cells.”

The team is currently seeking funding to investigate the reasons why CD8+ T-cells are turned on in individuals who suffer with severe asthma.

Professor Lindsay said:

“We need to determine why CD8+ is switched on, in order to understand whether it is a cause of extreme asthma or whether it is suffering with extreme asthma that switches it on.

If it is a cause we are able to target the activation of these immune cells using drugs, we might be able to prevent the switching on of CD8+ and provide a novel approach to the treatment of severe asthma.”

Asthma UK, a charity committed to enhancing the health and well-being of individuals who suffer with asthma, funded the investigation.

Leanne Metcalf, Director of Research as Asthma UK, commented:

“Asthma develops because of a complicated relationship between a person’s genetic make-up and the environment they are exposed to. Although asthma affects over 5.4 million people in the UK, we still don’t know precisely what causes it and why some people suffer so badly with their asthma symptoms. Therefore it’s really exciting for us to learn about specific differences in the way genes are activated in people with severe asthma and once we know why this occurs, we can attempt to develop new treatments that work in entirely different ways. This will be a real step forwards in freeing people from the restrictive and frightening effects of asthma symptoms which existing treatments cannot currently help them overcome.”

Written by Grace Rattue