Thursday, November 6, 2014

Asthma Causes Genetic Damage in Circulating Blood

     Until now, doctors have thought that the genetic damage caused by asthma was limited to the lungs. However, recent research at University of California, Los Angeles has shown that it negative affects the genes of peripheral, or circulating, blood in the body. 
     The study was conducted in an animal model that mimicked human asthma. Robert Schiestl, the senior author of the research, was the first to asses the role of IL-13 in genetic damage to cells. IL-13 is interleukin 13, a type of cytokine known to mediate inflammation. The research focused primarily on the over-expression of this IL-13. The results from Schiestl's studies have shown that IL-13 increases important elements of the inflammatory response, such as reactive oxygen species molecules. The research team found that reactive oxygen species-derived oxidative stress induced genetic damage with four main types of systemic effects in the peripheral blood. They are oxidative DNA damage, single and double DNA strand breaks, micronucleus formation, and protein damage. All of these effects cause the chromosome to become unstable, which can result in a variety of other diseases. 
     Schiestl and his team hope to use chemicals to repair the DNA of damaged cells. Their goal in doing this is to determine whether doing so will make asthma less damaging by reducing genetic instability in circulating blood. 

Robert Schiestl is a professor of pathology and radiation oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

     I found this article interesting because it is scary to learn that asthma affects the whole body more drastically than people think. Many people experience asthma and do not have it properly treated. It effects more than 150 million people throughout the world. This research shows how serious the disease can be. 

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