40 Fun Facts About Asthma

Grimault's Indian Cigarettes, advertised in 1907 as an asthma remedy, contained belladonna and which other plant drug?

Cannabis and belladonna were smoked because herbal smoke was long thought to relieve asthmatics. The habit waned once asthma was understood as an inflammatory reaction of the airways.

Which kind of weather event overwhelmed Melbourne's ambulances with asthma emergencies on one evening in November 2016?

A thunderstorm is thought to burst pollen grains into fragments small enough to reach the lungs. Melbourne's 2016 outbreak, the most severe on record, caused ten deaths.

Which future US president was a sickly child whose debilitating asthma attacks terrified him and his parents?

Theodore Roosevelt fought his frailty with a regime of vigorous exercise that he called the strenuous life. Hiking in the Alps as a boy showed him that exertion eased his attacks.

Research found that about 70 percent of Britain's elite squad in which Olympic sport had some form of asthma?

Swimming topped sports scientist John Dickinson's survey, far above the national asthma rate of eight to ten percent. A third of Team Sky's cyclists had some form of the condition too.

The metering valve in the first asthma puffer inhalers of the 1950s was originally designed to dispense which product?

Perfume was what the metering valve was first built to dispense. Riker Laboratories paired it with a propellant in 1955 to create the first metered-dose inhaler.

Which everyday stimulant, related to the asthma drug theophylline, improves airway function for up to four hours?

Caffeine in low doses raises a key measure of lung function by 5 to 18 percent in people with asthma. Some people drink coffee or tea to try to ease their symptoms.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, doctors who considered asthma a psychological illness often prescribed which treatment?

Psychoanalysis was prescribed because analysts read the asthmatic wheeze as a child's suppressed cry for its mother. Asthma was then listed among seven classic psychosomatic illnesses.

Which revolutionary and trained doctor suffered acute asthma all his life, even while leading guerrilla campaigns?

Che Guevara still excelled as an athlete and became a tireless cyclist. In Bolivia, most of his last offensives were attempts to obtain medicine for his worsening attacks.

Which novel about schoolboys stranded on an island features Piggy, who is scorned for his asthma and poor eyesight?

Lord of the Flies makes Piggy's glasses the boys' means of lighting their signal fire. William Golding's debut novel was rejected by many publishers before Faber & Faber accepted it.

Which creatures, barely visible to the naked eye and feeding on flakes of human skin, are a major indoor asthma trigger?

Dust mites turn up almost everywhere: their allergens were found in the beds of about 84 percent of surveyed American homes. They thrive in humid regions and eat shed skin from people and other animals.

In the UK, reliever inhalers that quickly open the airways during an asthma attack are often which colour?

Blue is the usual colour for relievers containing salbutamol, which quickly opens the airways. UK guidance now steers patients toward combination inhalers that also treat the underlying inflammation.

Which add-on device, sometimes improvised from a plastic bottle, helps more asthma inhaler medicine reach the lungs?

A spacer holds the puff in a chamber so it can be breathed in normally, with no need to time a breath to the spray. Some include a whistle that sounds if the user inhales too quickly.

The asthma reliever salbutamol, launched as Ventolin in 1969, goes by which generic name in the United States?

Albuterol is the United States Adopted Name, while most of the world says salbutamol. A team led by David Jack discovered the drug in 1966 at the Allen and Hanburys laboratory in Hertfordshire.

Which class of drugs, inhaled every day to calm swollen airways, is the mainstay of asthma preventer inhalers?

Corticosteroids damp down the inflammation behind asthma, typically taking one or two weeks to improve symptoms. Guidelines say to start them as soon as the diagnosis is confirmed.

Which painkiller triggers breathing reactions in people with Samter's triad, a form of asthma with nasal polyps?

Aspirin intolerance, asthma and nasal polyps make up the triad, which affects about 7 percent of asthmatics. Paradoxically, a daily dose after careful desensitization can help manage it.

Which class of heart and blood-pressure drugs is used with caution in asthma because it can make the airways tighten?

Beta blockers can block the very receptors that reliever inhalers stimulate to open the airways. US guidelines advise people with asthma against the non-selective kind.

Which itchy skin condition often appears in infancy ahead of asthma, a sequence doctors call the atopic march?

Eczema, known medically as atopic dermatitis, shares risk genes with asthma and hay fever. About 30 percent of people with it carry mutations in the gene for filaggrin, a skin-barrier protein.

Which handheld device, pioneered by Martin Wright in the 1950s, shows people with asthma how fast they can blow out?

A peak flow meter gives readings that asthma plans often sort into green, yellow and red zones. A result under half of a person's usual best signals a medical emergency.

Which machine uses compressed air or ultrasound to turn liquid asthma medicine into a mist breathed through a mask?

A nebulizer is common in hospitals for patients who struggle with inhalers, including those having severe attacks. Makers even sell pacifier attachments for infants and toddlers.

Which hormone, reported as an asthma treatment in 1905, was the drug in one of the first metered-dose inhalers?

Adrenaline, also called epinephrine, is the body's fight-or-flight hormone and relaxes the airways. Today it is kept for asthma that fails to respond to other treatments.

The word asthma comes from a Greek term, probably related to the word for wind, that meant what?

Panting, or shortness of breath, is what the Greek word meant, and English borrowed it through Latin in the late 1300s. Early English spellings such as asma left out the th altogether.

Which ancient Greek physician is credited with first using asthma as the name of a specific breathing problem?

Hippocrates gave the condition its name, and Aretaeus of Cappadocia later wrote a classic clinical account of it. Earlier still, ancient Egyptians treated it with an incense drink called kyphi.

Which 12th-century philosopher and court physician to Saladin wrote a Treatise on Asthma in Arabic?

Maimonides stressed clean air and a suitable climate in his treatise, alongside advice on diet. Its Arabic title was Maqala fi al-Rabw.

Which Egyptian medical scroll of about 1550 BC advises heating herbs on a brick so asthma patients can inhale the fumes?

The Ebers Papyrus is among the oldest preserved medical documents and is thought to copy even earlier texts. German Egyptologist Georg Ebers bought it at Luxor in the 1870s.

Rhinoviruses, a major cause of asthma flare-ups, are best known as the usual cause of which everyday illness?

The common cold can be caused by well over 200 virus strains. Viral infections are a major trigger of asthma attacks, which also rise during the back-to-school season in the fall.

Allergens from which household insects, found even in homes with no visible infestation, are linked with asthma?

Cockroaches leave detectable allergens in 20 to 48 percent of homes that show no sign of them. One culprit protein, tropomyosin, can also make sufferers react to shrimp.

Fel d 1, a protein that can set off allergic asthma, comes mainly from the saliva and skin glands of which pets?

Cats make Fel d 1 largely in their saliva and skin glands, and it causes the allergy in 90 percent of people allergic to them. Some Siberian cats carry gene variants that produce less of it.

Which idea, first formulated by David Strachan in 1989, links fewer early-childhood infections to rising asthma rates?

The hygiene hypothesis grew from Strachan's view that smaller families and cleaner homes gave children too little exposure to microbes. It does not claim that more infections are good overall.

On which South Atlantic island, settled by just a few families, do about half the residents have asthma?

Tristan da Cunha is considered the most remote inhabited place in the world. Studies of its closely related families by Toronto researcher Noe Zamel led to discoveries about the genetics of asthma.

A FeNO test, used to gauge airway inflammation in asthma, measures the level of which gas in exhaled breath?

Nitric oxide runs higher in the breath of people with asthma than in other people. Because it tracks airway inflammation, the measurement has been dubbed an inflammometer.

People are advised to rinse the mouth after using an asthma preventer inhaler to lower the risk of which infection?

Oral thrush is a yeast infection that medicine left on the tongue and throat can encourage, showing as a white coating. Slowing the spray so that less lands in the mouth lowers the risk too.

Which type of tissue, wrapped around the bronchi and bronchioles, tightens to narrow the airways in an asthma attack?

Smooth muscle is involuntary, so nobody can simply will their airways open. In asthma, long-running inflammation makes this layer thicker, one of the structural changes known as remodelling.

Which breathing test for asthma, repeated after a dose of medication, measures the air forced out in one second?

Spirometry is done twice when testing for asthma, and a clear improvement after medication points to the diagnosis. No single test can confirm it, so the pattern of symptoms is weighed as well.

Which French novelist, struck by severe asthma from the age of nine, was considered a hypochondriac by his doctors?

Marcel Proust spent his last three years mostly confined to his bedroom, sleeping by day and working at night to complete In Search of Lost Time.

Which British marathon runner was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma at 14 after blacking out in training?

Paula Radcliffe went on to hold the women's marathon world record for 16 years with her 2003 time of 2:15:25. She had taken up running at seven, influenced by her marathon-running father.

Which country removed the asthma reliever fenoterol from its drug tariff in 1989 after an epidemic of asthma deaths?

New Zealand saw its asthma death rate fall once fenoterol was withdrawn. Studies had found that people using the drug were more likely to die than those on alternative relievers.

Roger Altounyan, who tested an early asthma drug on himself, lent his name to a character in which children's novel?

Swallows and Amazons author Arthur Ransome taught the Altounyan children to sail and borrowed their names for the Walker family. Roger, the ship's boy, grew up to develop sodium cromoglycate.

Which antibody class, discovered in 1966 at a children's asthma hospital in Denver, triggers allergic reactions?

IgE is normally the scarcest antibody class in the blood. The injectable asthma drug omalizumab works by binding to it.

In a severe asthma attack, what does the sign doctors call a silent chest indicate?

Almost no air is moving, so the wheeze fades as the attack worsens rather than eases. Doctors treat it as a sign of immediate risk to life, alongside falling oxygen levels.

Which substance, made by goblet cells to trap inhaled particles, builds up and clogs the airways in asthma?

Mucus normally protects the lungs by trapping foreign particles before they get in. In asthma the glands that make it grow larger, and thick plugs help to narrow the airways.