Is Asthma A Chronic Condition

Vaccine Distribution In Canada

As part of the Canadian Thoracic Societys COVID-19 Respiratory Roundtable panel representing Canadians living with lung disease, Asthma Canada signed a joint statement titled Prioritization of Canadians with Lung Disease in COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout. Alongside other lung health organizations, Asthma Canada is urging federal, provincial and territorial governments to prioritize people living with lung disease who are at higher risk for more serious COVID-19 complications in the vaccination rollout. From Canadians living with a lung disease such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease , cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, pulmonary hypertension, and pre- and post-lung transplant, there is widespread concern regarding when in the vaccine rollout in the provinces and territories they will have the opportunity to receive the vaccine.

We will continue to advocate for our community on this subject and will share more information as it becomes available.

Read the full statement here:English | French

Why Do People Get Asthma

Research has yet to show a definitive cause of asthma. However, researchers have determined several risk factors that can lead to asthma development.

Family History and Genetics

Children of mothers with asthma are three times more likely to suffer from asthma, and 2.5 times more likely if the father has asthma. More than 30 genes have been linked to asthma so far, and gene-gene interactions, gene-environment interactions and epigenetic modifications also play a part. Genetic differences also play a role in differences in response to treatment.

Allergies

People are more likely to have asthma if they have certain types of allergies, such ones which can affect the eyes and nose. However, not everyone who has allergies will get asthma and not everyone who has asthma is affected by allergies. Respiratory allergies and some types of asthma are related to an antibody called immunoglobulin E , which the immune system produces in response to allergens. To protect the body, the IgE causes allergic reactions that can affect the eyes, nose, throat, lungs and skin.

Premature Birth

Children born before 37 weeks are at increased risk of developing asthma later in life.

Lung Infections

Babies or small children may be at risk of developing asthma later in life if they had certain lung infections at a very early age.

Occupational Exposures

Hormones

Women can develop adult-onset asthma during or after menopause.

Environment Air Quality

Obesity

What Is An Asthma Action Plan

Your healthcare provider will work with you to develop an asthma action plan. This plan tells you how and when to use your medicines. It also tells you what to do if your asthma gets worse and when to seek emergency care. Understand the plan and ask your healthcare provider about anything you dont understand.

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S Everyone Can Take To Lower The Risk Of Getting And Spreading Covid

• Practice social distancing/self-monitoring/self-isolation/isolation as directed by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
• Wash your hands thoroughly and often with soap and warm water for at least 30 seconds.
• Wear a non-medical grade face mask when you are in public places and in situations where you are not able to maintain physical distancing, like on public transportation or the grocery store.
• Avoid closed spaces, crowded places, and close contact.
• Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces, such as toys, phones and door handles.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose, ears or mouth.
• Stay home if you are sick. Encourage those you know who are sick to stay home until they no longer have symptoms.
• Avoid contact with people who are unwell.
• Make sure that you get high-quality information about COVID-19 from reliable sources. The Public Health Agency of Canada is a reliable source of information, as are provincial and territorial public health authorities.

Medical History And Physical Exam

Your doctor will ask about your risk factors for asthma and your symptoms. They may ask also about any known allergies. This includes how often symptoms occur, what seems to trigger your symptoms, when or where symptoms occur, and if your symptoms wake you up at night.

During the physical exam, your doctor may:

• Listen to your breathing and look for symptoms of asthma
• Look for allergic skin conditions, such as eczema

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How Is Severe Asthma Diagnosed

More steps are taken to arrive at a diagnosis of Severe Asthma compared to mild-to-moderate asthma. As in mild-to-moderate asthma, healthcare providers will take a detailed medical history, listen for wheezing on examination of the chest, and assess for underlying allergic and non-allergic triggers. Underlying diseases such as eczema or allergic rhinitis may be clues that allergy is present. Allergy skin testing may be performed to evaluate if specific allergic triggers are present that can result in asthma attacks.

In addition, healthcare professionals will likely also conduct objective examinations of lung function including spirometry, or peak expiratory flow , and in some cases, sputum cell counts, which indicate the presence, type, and extent of inflammation in the airways. These objective tests in addition to history will help determine if a patient has Severe Asthma, and will inform treatment choices for patients.

Healthcare providers should refer patients with Severe Asthma to a specialist to confirm their diagnosis and assist in management.

Cdcs National Asthma Control Program

NACP was created in 1999 to help the millions of people with asthma in the United States gain control over their disease. The programs goals include reducing the number of deaths, hospitalizations, emergency department visits, school days or workdays missed, and limitations on activity due to asthma. The NACP collects data on state-specific levels to focus efforts and resources where they are needed.

The NACP leads national initiatives and provides state funding for a variety of activities focuses on surveillance, intervention, partnerships and evaluation. The NACP funds states, cities, school programs, and non-government organizations to help them improve surveillance of asthma, train health professionals, educate individuals with asthma and their families, and explain asthma to the public. The program has improved asthma treatment, management, and control in the U.S.

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Flu & People With Asthma

• When to Seek Emergency Medical Care

People with asthma are at higher risk of developing serious flu complications, even if their asthma is mild or their symptoms are well-controlled by medication. People with asthma can develop swollen and sensitive airways, and flu can cause further inflammation of the airways and lungs. Flu infections can trigger asthma attacks and a worsening of asthma symptoms. Flu also can lead to pneumonia and other acute respiratory diseases. In fact, adults and children with asthma are more likely to develop pneumonia after getting sick with flu than people who do not have asthma. Asthma is the most common medical condition among children hospitalized with flu and one of the more common medical conditions among adults hospitalized with flu. For information about underlying health conditions in reported flu hospitalizations, see the FluView Interactive application.

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Asthma And Copd: Whats The Difference And Is There A Link

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are lung diseases. Both cause swelling in your airways that makes it hard to breathe.

With asthma, the swelling is often triggered by something youâre allergic to, like pollen or mold, or by physical activity. COPD is the name given to a group of lung diseases that include emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

Emphysema happens when the tiny sacs in your lungs are damaged. Chronic bronchitis is when the tubes that carry air to your lungs get inflamed. Smoking is the most common cause of those conditions .

Asthma gets better. Symptoms can come and go, and you may be symptom-free for a long time. With COPD, symptoms are constant and get worse over time, even with treatment.

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What Are The Treatments For Asthma

If you have asthma, you will work with your health care provider to create a treatment plan. The plan will include ways to manage your asthma symptoms and prevent asthma attacks. It will include

• Strategies to avoid triggers. For example, if tobacco smoke is a trigger for you, you should not smoke or allow other people to smoke in your home or car.
• Short-term relief medicines, also called quick-relief medicines. They help prevent symptoms or relieve symptoms during an asthma attack. They include an inhaler to carry with you all the time. It may also include other types of medicines which work quickly to help open your airways.
• Control medicines. You take them every day to help prevent symptoms. They work by reducing airway inflammation and preventing narrowing of the airways.

If you have a severe attack and the short-term relief medicines do not work, you will need emergency care.

Your provider may adjust your treatment until asthma symptoms are controlled.

Sometimes asthma is severe and cannot be controlled with other treatments. If you are an adult with uncontrolled asthma, in some cases your provider might suggest bronchial thermoplasty. This is a procedure that uses heat to shrink the smooth muscle in the lungs. Shrinking the muscle reduces your airway’s ability to tighten and allows you to breathe more easily. The procedure has some risks, so it’s important to discuss them with your provider.

Airway Inflammation In Asthma

The airway inflammation in asthma is persistent even though symptoms are episodic, and the relationship between the severity of asthma and the intensity of inflammation is not clearly established .The inflammation affects all airways including in most patients the upper respiratory tract and nose but its physiological effects are most pronounced in medium sized bronchi . The pattern of inflammation in the airways appears to be similar in all clinical form of asthma, whether allergic, non-allergic, or aspirin-induced and at all ages .

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What Are Common Asthma Attack Triggers

An asthma attack happens when someone comes in contact with substances that irritate them. Healthcare providers call these substances triggers. Knowing what triggers your asthma makes it easier to avoid asthma attacks.

For some people, a trigger can bring on an attack right away. Sometimes, an attack may start hours or days later.

Triggers can be different for each person. But some common triggers include:

• Air pollution: Many things outside can cause an asthma attack. Air pollution includes factory emissions, car exhaust, wildfire smoke and more.
• Dust mites: You cant see these bugs, but they are in many homes. If you have a dust mite allergy, they can cause an asthma attack.
• Exercise: For some people, exercising can cause an attack.
• Mold: Damp places can spawn mold. It can cause problems for people with asthma. You dont even have to be allergic to mold to have an attack.
• Pests: Cockroaches, mice and other household pests can cause asthma attacks.
• Pets: Your pets can cause asthma attacks. If youre allergic to pet dander , breathing in the dander can irritate your airways.
• Tobacco smoke: If you or someone in your home smokes, you have a higher risk of developing asthma. The best solution is to quit smoking.
• Strong chemicals or smells.

With asthma, you may not have all of these symptoms. You may have different signs at different times. And symptoms can change between asthma attacks.

Airflow Limitation In Copd

The chronic airflow limitation of COPD is caused by a mixture of small airway disease and parenchymal destruction , the relative contributions of which vary from person to person . Chronic inflammation causes structural changes and narrowing of small airways. Destruction of the lung parenchyma, also by inflammatory processes, leads to the loss of alveolar attachments to the small airways and decreases lung elastic recoil in turn these changes diminish the ability of the airways to remain open during expiration .

So in COPD inflammation causes small airway disease and parenchymal destruction that all lead to airflow limitation .

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Viral Exposure In Children

Evidence suggests that rhinovirus illness during infancy is a significant risk factor for the development of wheezing in preschool children and a frequent trigger of wheezing illnesses in children with asthma. Human rhinovirus C is a newly identified genotype of HRV found in patients with respiratory tract infections. A study of children with acute asthma who presented to the emergency department found HRVC present in the majority of patients. The presence of HRVC was also associated with more severe asthma.

Approximately 80-85% of childhood asthma episodes are associated with prior viral exposure. Prior childhood pneumonia due to infection by respiratory syncytial virus, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, and/or Chlamydia species was found in more than 50% of a small sample of children aged 7-9 years who later had asthma. Treatment with antibiotics appropriate for these organisms improves the clinical signs and symptoms of asthma.

Information Sources And Selection Criteria

Occupational respiratory irritants

To identify the evidence of irritants of the respiratory tract, all agents denoted as may cause respiratory irritation by the phrase H335 and may cause allergy or asthma symptoms or breathing difficulties if inhaled H334 and/or as irritants by American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists were initially listed later this list was compared with results of our database search .

Database search.

We searched for publications reporting investigations exclusively in humans . To be included, the publications had to deal with subjects occupationally exposed to airway irritants.

MEDLINE®-Database was searched with PubMed® from its inception up to December 2007 with the following medical subject headings combinations for each single agent:

Agent AND Humans AND OR Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive OR Lung Diseases, Obstructive/*chemically induced OR Respiratory Function Tests) AND ).

If more than 20 publications per agent were found, the search was more specified:

Agent AND Humans AND AND adverse effects AND OR Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive OR Lung Diseases, Obstructive/*chemically induced OR Respiratory Function Tests) AND ).

Reference list screening

We also considered references in the identified already existing 13 systematic reviews or overviews of causes of work-related asthma or COPD and tried to combine results of both approaches.

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Similaraties And Differences In Acute Exacerbation Of Asthma And Copd

• Pathology is different in exacerbation of asthma and COPD

• Causes of acute exacerbation of asthma and COPD are different.

• Different role of LABA and ICS in prophylaxis of exacerbation of asthma and COPD.

• Treatment of acute exacerbation is similar in asthma and COPD.

Acute exacerbation of Asthma

Triggers of acute exacerbation of asthma are usually: allergens, infections , GE reflux, other triggers, sometimes and co-morbidity .

Pharmacotherapy of acute asthma exacerbation

• Bronchodilators

• corticosteroids . Other therapy

• oxygen therapy

• non -invasive mechanical ventilation

• antibiotics

• epinephrine rarely in a very serious asthma attack

• He/Ox rarely and MgSO4 intravenously rarely.

Acute exacerbation of COPD

Triggers of acute exacerbation of COPD are usually: infections , airpollution, GE reflux, sometimes and co-morbidity .

Pharmacotherapy of acute COPD exacerbation:

• Bronchodilators

• antibiotics in patients with severe exacerbation Other therapy:

• oxygen therapy

• non -invasive mechanical ventilation .

Strategies For Addressing Asthma In Schools

CDCs Strategies for Addressing Asthma in Schools guide provides a compilation of information and resources for implementing asthma programs in schools. Although it was designed for staff in state health departments, school systems with an interest in asthma friendly schools have found it to be useful.

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Managing Your Asthma During The Pandemic

• Keep taking your controller medication daily or as prescribed. This will help cut your risk of an asthma attack being triggered by any respiratory virus, including COVID-19.
• Carry your reliever inhaler with you every day, in case your asthma symptoms flare up.
• Monitor your asthma symptoms closely and follow your Asthma Action Plan to help you recognize and manage asthma symptoms, and know when to seek advice from your healthcare provider or emergency help.
• If you must travel, pack all asthma medications in your carry-on luggage so it is easily accessible. Pack extra asthma medication in case your travel plans change or are delayed. Be sure to check travel advice and advisories from the Government of Canadas website.
• Take care of yourself. Get plenty of rest and fluids, and eat good nutritious food.
• Ensure that you speak with your healthcare provider about recommended vaccinations. Getting both the influenza vaccination and pneumococcal disease vaccinationare important steps people with asthma can take to help stay healthy.
• Reach out to Asthma Canadas Asthma & Allergy HelpLinecall-back service to connect with a Certified Respiratory Educator if you have questions about managing your asthma. Call 1-866-787-4050 or email

Difference Between Asthma And Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

July 21, 2017 by Rachna C

The respiratory disease which is diagnosed during childhood, resulting in shortness of breathing, dryness of a cough, chest tightening is called asthma. On the other hand, COPD also known as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease is also one of the respiratory disease, which occurs after the age of 4o, and the condition gets progressively worse with age.

The cells of our body need oxygen to work and grow, and this oxygen is taken by the lungs through the simple process of breathing. Usually, in a day, we breathe 25,000 times a day. But people suffering from any lungs infection experience the problem in breathing.

Lung diseases are one of the most common medical conditions existing in the world. There are many kinds of lungs infections like bronchitis, cystic fibrosis, emphysema, COPD, asthma, pneumonia, tuberculosis, etc. pollutions, infections, allergens, smoking or genetics can be the major cause of all these problems.

In this article, we will mark the vital difference between the two common respiratory disease asthma and the COPD. We will also discuss their causes, symptoms, and treatment.

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