Scientists have discovered an unexpected clue that could one day lead to better treatments for allergic asthma.
The research, carried out at National Jewish Health and published in Science Advances, found that a protein called CBX7 plays a much bigger role in asthma than researchers had previously believed.
Allergic asthma affects millions of people worldwide and is one of the most common long-term lung diseases. People with asthma have airways that become swollen and narrow, making breathing difficult.
Common symptoms include coughing, wheezing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath. These symptoms are often triggered by allergens such as pollen, dust mites, pet dander, or mold.
Current medicines, including inhalers and immune-targeting drugs, can control symptoms for many people, but they do not cure the disease. Scientists therefore continue searching for the biological changes that start and maintain inflammation.
In the new study, Dr. Kapil Sirohi and colleagues investigated CBX7, a protein previously known mainly for switching genes off inside the cell nucleus. To their surprise, they found that CBX7 also helps switch important inflammatory genes on after the body encounters allergens.
The team discovered that once activated, CBX7 works in two places at the same time. It sends signals in the fluid of the cell while also carrying messages into the nucleus, where it works with other proteins to increase the production of inflammatory molecules called cytokines.
Cytokines help immune cells communicate, but too many of them can keep inflammation going and make asthma worse. The researchers found that reducing CBX7 activity greatly lowered cytokine production, showing that the protein acts like an important control switch for inflammation.
Another important finding was that CBX7 mainly worked inside immune cells rather than the cells lining the airways. This could make it a more precise target for future medicines because treatments may be able to calm harmful immune responses without affecting as many healthy cells.
The researchers hope that future drugs could block CBX7 before inflammation becomes established instead of simply treating symptoms after they appear. The findings add an important new piece to the puzzle of allergic asthma, but there are still limitations. This research was carried out at the molecular and cell level, not as a clinical trial in patients.
Much more research will be needed to confirm the findings and determine whether blocking CBX7 is both safe and effective in humans.
Even so, discovering a completely new pathway involved in asthma is an exciting advance that could eventually lead to more targeted treatments with fewer side effects than some current therapies.
If you care about health, please read studies that vitamin D can help reduce inflammation, and vitamin K could lower your heart disease risk by a third.
For more health information, please see recent studies about new way to halt excessive inflammation, and results showing foods that could cause inflammation.
Source: National Jewish Health.
