People Suffering from Asthma Are More Prone to Catch Flu

One of the most common non communicable diseases amongst children and some adults is asthma. Asthma is a lung disorder that hinders smooth breathing. A person in this condition experiences recurrent bouts of asthmatic attacks, which is caused by a chronic inflammation leading to narrowing of the airway obstructing the air flow to the lungs. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are close to 300 million people suffering from asthma across the globe. A recent study suggested that people with asthma are less likely to combat flu than people without asthma because of immune system differences. Asthmatics have weaker immune system, which makes it difficult for them to combat the flu virus and trigger a reaction. Published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, for the study researchers evaluated the lung samples of both the asthmatics and healthy volunteers. These samples were further exposed to influenza and their reactions an the difference in reactions were then taken a note of. One of the researches, Ben Nicholas from the University of Southampton in London said, "We wanted to look into whether immune system differences explain why asthmatics are more likely to end up in hospital if they get flu than the general population. This is important, as flu can cause a person's asthma symptoms to get worse." 
 The team then concluded that the samples from healthy volunteers showed a strong immune system-triggering reaction to the flu virus. And when it came the lung samples from asthma patients the reaction was much weaker."We hope these results help researchers better understand why asthmatics are more affected by influenza and help find new treatments for common lung infections, which often make asthma symptoms worse," Nicholas added.The researchers said, that further research is required to study whether the difference in immune responses is due to the asthma only, or if it has links to the daily medications used by participating team of asthmatics to control their condition.