Category: Featured Stories and Interviews

Stem Cell Therapy May Help Treat Patients with Severe Asthma Says Study

According to a study conducted by Dr Eva Mezey, of the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, mice that developed Asthma by being exposed to pollen were protected against attacks after the cells obtained from bone marrow were injected into them.

These particular stem cells are already used to suppress inflammatory response after bone marrow transplants in humans according to the report.

The researchers believe the bone marrow stem cells reduce inflammation in the airways, the immune system’s normal response to severe cases of asthma.

The researchers whose findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences say about 5,000 people a year die from asthma in the US alone with 100,000 fatalities throughout the world.

Treatments for severe cases are largely inadequate at resolving the sufferer’s conditions so new ones are needed for therapy-resistant ones.

They say the stem cells are already used to treat autoimmune diseases and the same approach could provide help treat asthma and other severe allergic conditions.

Lead researcher Dr Mezey and colleagues said: “These data suggest that allergic conditions — specifically therapy resistant asthma — might also be a likely target of the recently discovered cellular therapy approach using BMSCs.

“These data provide another example of the ability of BMSCs to ‘sense’ their immunological environment and respond accordingly.

“It is hard to imagine a drug or combination of drugs that could act this way and further work should be done to determine whether the cells could be used to treat patients with therapy-resistant asthma.”

Asthma: Searching for a Cure;
Are Antibiotics the Answer?

By Tinka Davi

This is a story about one mans search for a cure for Asthma.

For more than seven years, Bill Cullifer of Folsom, CA has suffered from asthma. His conversation is punctuated by deep, uncontrollable coughs that occur frequently and without warning. His children can often locate him by his frequent coughs.

Asthma prevents him from strenuous physical activity. In fact, Cullifer’s energy is so regularly sapped, he finds it difficult to exercise at all.

First diagnosed with adult onset asthma in 2004 Cullifer sought treatment from his primary physician and has consulted with a variety of specialist ranging from allergist, ear nose and throat specialist and pulmonologist.

To treat his Asthma they’ve prescribed three different medications, Zymbicort, Sprivia and Prednisone,

Now Cullifer has added another med, an antibiotic, azithromycin to the mix. That medication is the result of his ceaseless pursuit of information about asthma, its causes, remedies and a possible cure.

To assist him in his research, Cullifer established an Asthma foundation, a news blog and a Facebook page to help him educate himself and others about Asthma and lung disease. It was there (https://worldasthmafoundation.org/asthma-and-chlamydia-pneumoniae.htm ) that he ran across a press release and a video presentation from the American Society of Microbiology annual conference that talked about the role of bacteria in severe asthma and the potential for antibiotic treatment. A study presented by Eduard Drizik, a microbiologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, showed a significant link between Chlamydia pneumoniae (bacteria that causes severe asthma symptoms, not the sexually transmitted disease) and the severity of asthma.

“We know that asthma is a multifactorial disease and has many phenotypes.” Phenotypes are observable properties of an organism that are produced by the interaction of the genotype and the environment.

“We have found infectious phenotypes and based on the data and findings that have shown that there is one phenotype that can be curable with antibiotics,” said Drizik.

The article stated that “. . . patients who were treated on the basis of asthma severity with antibiotics had significant improvements in asthma symptoms and some even experienced a complete abolition of these symptoms.” Drizik recommended that physicians should further explore the involvement of microbes in difficult to treat asthma cases, since there might be a cure for some types of asthma.

The word “cure” definitely caught Cullifer’s attention.

He dug further and found a physician in Wisconsin, David L. Hahn, who has pioneered the research and has published a paper on the treatment of C. pneumoniae. Hahn, a family practitioner and Dean of the Medical Center and Clinical Professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, began treating his asthma patients with antibiotics several years ago.
Cullifer called and interviewed Hahn. Their discussion is podcast on Facebook at http://facebook.com/asthmafoundation.

In the interview, Hahn said that the patients with new onset asthma who had documented C. pneumoniae infections and who received antibiotics improved. In fact, he said, their asthma disappeared after early treatment. However, those with longstanding persistent asthma didn’t respond well to traditional treatments and Hahn prescribed the antibiotic azithromycin.

Hahn said, “Azithromycin is unique . . . almost like a magic bullet for intracellular infections, because of all the macrolide antibiotics, which are effective against Chlamydia pneumoniae, it concentrates intracellularly and doesn’t get out of the cells very easily.” Because that’s where the bacteria live, that’s where the medicine should be.

Hahn credits Pfizer, Inc. developers of Zithromax (azithromycin) who showed an early interest in doing clinical trials on the effect of the drug and asthma. “They did help in very significant ways…but made a decision not to lodge major clinical trials in asthma,” Hahn said.

The doctor recommends long-term dosing of Zithromax/azithromycin, instead of the typical 10 days to two weeks of treatment. Cullifer is taking the medication for 14 weeks and is already feeling better. “I’m into my fourth week and I definitely have more energy,” he said.

There’s a downside to taking azithromycin long term. It’s what Hahn calls an antibiotic resistance on the part of physicians who have been trained not to prescribe antibiotics unnecessarily. Other physicians just don’t sign on to prescribing it, but Hahn and patients including Cullifer are hopeful that will change when the benefits are widely publicized and understood.

Hahn noted that many asthma patients who ask to be treated with azithromycin are being turned away because their physicians don’t know about the potential for treatment and it’s not in the guidelines. He’d like to see pressure on the part of the public to let physicians and practice know there is a real demand for this sort of treatment with antibiotics.

He’s writing a book that he hopes might broaden the public’s awareness of the issue. “This is creative gonzo marketing and may be the only way to go because I have tried all the traditional routes,” Hahn said.

Cullifer has had asthma episodes and been hospitalized more than once. “I could have died,” he said. That’s why he’s supporting physicians like Drizik and Hahn and their diligent efforts to find treatment for long term and severe asthma. Cullifer is continually providing resources and updates on the World Asthma Foundation blog and on Facebook. Like other asthma sufferers, he is campaigning for a cure.

About Asthma
The World Health Organization estimates that 235 million people suffer from asthma, a chronic disease characterized by recurrent attacks of breathlessness, coughing and wheezing. These attacks vary in severity and frequency from person to person. The disease is managed by controlling symptoms, which may occur several times in a day or week in affected individuals. For some people, symptoms become worse during physical activity or at night. Asthma is a strong risk factor for the development of Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (COPD), one of the most chronic lung diseases that make it difficult to breathe. The recognition that asthma pathogenesis involves chronic inflammation has led to studies investigating the presence of various infectious organisms. There is no cure for asthma.

Tinka Davi, contributing writer and editor for the World Asthma Foundation, writes on a variety of health issues and lifestyle topics. She is based in Folsom, CA.

Does Ozone Matter?

According to Mount Sinai School of Medicine of New York, NY climate change may lead to more asthma-related health problems in children, resulting in more emergency room visits in the next decade.

Researchers found changing levels of ozone could lead to more than a seven percent increase in ER visits by children under 17.

The team used regional and atmospheric chemistry models to simulate ozone levels for June through August in the 2020s and compared them to 1990s levels.

Study authors say they plan to continue using these models to understand specific impacts of climate change. They conclude better measures to reduce carbon pollution need to be implemented to protect our health.

The abstract was presented on Sunday, May 3, 2009 at the Pediatric Academic Societies Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. The lead author of this research is Perry Elizabeth Sheffield, MD, Pediatric Environmental Health Fellow in the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine and the Department of Pediatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Mount Sinai worked with Natural Resources Defense Council and the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health on this eye-opening research that finds a direct connection between air pollution and the health of children.Ozone has many known negative respiratory health effects to which children are particularly vulnerable.

An important projected consequence of climate change is the increase in ground-level ozone. Urban areas such as the New York City metropolitan area are at a higher risk of increasing temperature compared to rural areas. However, while more ozone is formed in higher temperatures, the downwind suburban areas are predicted in some of the models to experience higher ozone levels.

For this study, Dr. Sheffield and her colleagues created a model describing future projected rates of respiratory hospitalizations for children less than two years of age using baseline NYC metropolitan area hospitalization rates from publicly available corresponding state Department of Health databases.

These hospitalization rates were then compared to a previously developed dose-response relationship between ozone levels and pediatric respiratory hospitalizations, and the expected New York City eight-hour daily maximum ozone levels for the 2020s, as projected by a regional climate model created by the NY Climate and Health Project, supported by a grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Two separate future scenarios were used. The two scenarios differed by the amount of projected ozone precursor emissions (chemicals that are converted to ozone by light and heat).

In both scenarios, ozone levels rise by 2020. The study found that by 2020, respiratory hospitalizations are projected to rise between four and seven percent for children under two years old because of projected air pollution (ozone) increases. The scenario with increased ozone precursors showed less of an overall increase in hospital admissions because of a paradoxical reduction in ozone due to the effects of air pollutant interactions, sometimes referred to as the scavenger molecule effect. These are likely conservative estimates because population was held constant, a single dose response function was used for the entire area, and most counties were not weighted by race and ethnicity. “These significant changes in children’s hospitalizations from respiratory illnesses would be a direct result of projected climate-change effects on ground-level ozone concentrations,” said Dr. Sheffield. “This research is important because it shows that we as a country need to implement policies that both improve air quality and also prevent climate change because this could improve health in the present and prevent worsening respiratory illness in the future.”

Our study supports the necessity of improving air pollution around the world. We need to begin to make these improvements through industry emission controls, traffic reduction policies, and increased enforcement of traffic regulations, said study co-author Dr. Philip Landrigan, Professor and Chair of Community and Preventive Medicine, and Director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center, at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.