Difficult-to-treat asthma often may have more to do with patients who do not take their medication as instructed than ineffective medication, according to researchers in Northern Ireland.

Inflammation still ravages the lungs of some smokers years after they quit the habit. What sparks that smoldering destruction remained a mystery until a consortium of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine found that certain dendritic cells in the lung – the cells that "present" a foreign antigen or protein to the immune system – provoke production of destructive ...

Findings from a two-year study on asthma and wheezing illness in one year olds and kindergarten children, released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, show that within the first three years of life, almost 17% of Australian infants experienced asthma or wheezing illness.

A study conducted in Vietnam has added further weight to the view that parasitic gut worms, such as hookworm, could help in the prevention and treatment of asthma and other allergies.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have identified a genetic mutation that accounts for a perplexing condition found in people with an inherited immunodeficiency. The disorder, called combined immunodeficiency, is characterised by a constellation of severe health problems, including persistent bacterial and viral skin infections, severe eczema, acute allergies and asthma, and ...

For men with type 2 diabetes, a cell type linked to allergic inflammation is closely linked to a key indicator of diabetic kidney disease (nephropathy), suggests a study in the November Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). "Allergy is a common disease that is increasing worldwide, so our findings may have important implications for diabetic ...

When the sun is out and the flowers are in full bloom, Spring may be in the air but so is the pollen. So while the rest of us are coming out to play, allergy and asthma sufferers feel it the most.

New research hints that the common belief that kids who go to daycare have lower rates of asthma and allergy later in life might be nothing more than wishful thinking. While young children in daycare definitely do get more illnesses and experience more respiratory symptoms as a result, any perceived protection these exposures afford against asthma and allergy seem to disappear by the time the ...

A treatment that doctors have been prescribing for years to fight allergy in eyes is now available over-the-counter at pharmacies. Zaditen (ketotifen) eye drops are used to treat the symptoms of seasonal allergic conjunctivitis (SAC),1 a condition that ...

The lowly appendix, long-regarded as a useless evolutionary artifact, won newfound respect two years ago when researchers at Duke University Medical Center proposed that it actually serves a critical function. The appendix, they said, is a safe haven where good bacteria could hang out until they were needed to repopulate the gut after a nasty case of diarrhoea, for example.