Mechanisms of Deficient Innate Immune Responses in Asthma

哮喘是英国最常见的慢性呼吸道疾病。大部分医疗费用与急性发作有关。哮喘患者也害怕急性发作，因为它们会导致严重的呼吸困难、住院或死亡。目前的治疗方法在治疗或预防急性发作方面都不好。因此，迫切需要新的治疗方法。哮喘发作是由普通感冒病毒引起的，这些病毒？进入胸部？一些还会因慢性细菌定植而变得更糟，这种细菌可以重新激活？在急性发作期间。我们发现哮喘患者对病毒和细菌感染的免疫反应较弱，这是他们对这些感染的易感性增加的原因。我们计划对成人哮喘患者的肺细胞进行详细的抗病毒和抗细菌免疫研究，以确定在这些攻击过程中肺内缺乏启动免疫反应的分子。我们还将研究不同形式的哮喘，看看这些缺陷有多普遍，并将研究从出生到6岁的儿童，看看这些缺陷何时发展。最后，我们将看看血液测试是否能发现缺陷，以便更容易地识别它们。通过识别在这些发作中缺陷的分子，我们应该能够确定预防和治疗哮喘急性发作的新疗法的开发目标。这样做将大大减少哮喘患者的痛苦，并降低死亡率和医疗成本。

Asthma is the most common chronic respiratory disease in the UK. The majority of healthcare costs are related to acute attacks. Acute attacks are also dreaded by asthma sufferers, as they lead to severe breathlessness, hospitalisation or death. Current therapies are not good at either treatment or prevention of acute attacks. New approaches to therapy are therefore urgently needed. Asthma attacks are caused by common cold viruses, which ?go to the chest?, some are also made worse by chronic bacterial colonisation which can be ?reactivated? during acute attacks. We have discovered asthmatics have weak immune responses to viral and bacterial infections, accounting for their increased susceptibility to these infections. We plan to carry out detailed studies of anti-viral and anti-bacterial immunity in lung cells from adults with asthma, to identify the molecules deficient in switching on immune responses in the lung during these attacks. We will also study different forms of asthma to see how widespread these deficiencies are, and will study children through from birth to 6 years of age, to see when these deficiencies develop. Finally we will see if the deficiencies are detected in blood tests so they can be more easily identified.By identifying the molecules that are deficient during these attacks, we should be able to identify targets for the development of new therapies for both prevention and treatment of acute attack of asthma. So doing would greatly reduce distress suffered by asthma patients, as well as reducing mortality and health care costs.