Recent research at Harvard Medical School reported in the March 16, 2006 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine indicates that a kind of natural "killer" cells cause asthma. The related article indicates that an estimated 17 million-20 million people in the United States suffer from asthma, and cases of it have been increasing since the early 1980s, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Every day, in this country, 30,000 people suffer an asthma attack, and 14 people die from the disease.
Scientists so far knew that asthma occurs when the body’s immune-system cells identify harmless inhaled particles such as dust or pollen as external irritants (enemy) and as a result, work to constrict airways causing typical asthma symptoms such as breathlessness, wheezing or coughing. Scientists believed that T helper cells were responsible for this adverse reaction.
However, a research team at Harvard has now found that most of the trouble-raising cells in the lungs of asthmatics aren’t helper cells but a little-known group of natural killer cells. In general, killer cells enjoy the reputation of destroying disease-causing invaders, but this special group wages war on otherwise normal lungs.
The finding means that physicians may not be treating asthma sufferers with the right kinds of drugs. For example, natural killer T cells seem to be resistant to the corticosteroids in widely used inhalers.
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