Asthma research is going on all the time in many locations around the world. To many people the phrase ‘Asthma research’ is automatically interpreted to mean scientific research directed at finding a cure for asthma. Yet much asthma research also focuses on other social, psychological or lifestyle factors which affect asthma sufferers and their families.
A good example of this is the research effort directed towards increasing patient compliance with medications. There are several types of medication which are known to improve asthma and which are regularly prescribed to people with asthma, yet there are many of these people who do not take their medication and so put themselves at risk of an acute asthma attack.
Research is also carried out into other therapies for asthma such as breathing exercises and whether these are effective in reducing asthma in some people.
Unfortunately there is no single identifiable cause for asthma. Increasingly there is the view that asthma is more realistically viewed as a group of symptoms which are common to several underlying conditions. Consequently finding a ‘cure’ is more like trying to put together a large jigsaw puzzle without any idea of what the final picture is. Each research group is contributing to adding a small piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
A way to prevent asthma from developing is as important as finding a cure; it is far better to stop young lungs being damaged by asthma than it is try to treat the damage once it has occurred. We know that there are certain risk factors associated with asthma and there are also some things that seem to provide a protective effect. So gradually parts of the jigsaw are being put together.
It may seem reasonable to expect that because of the amount of research being conducted into asthma that ‘breakthroughs’ would occur quite frequently. Because of the breadth and complexity of the research this is unfortunately not the case. However, many small but significant discoveries do occur and from time to time we will endeavour to report these studies on our website.