Asthma can occur to anyone, at any age. Approximately fourteen million adults and six million children in the U.S. alone are suffering from asthma. Sometime there is a history of asthma or allergies in other family members.

Human lungs are quite similar to the branches of a tree. Air tubes get narrow and narrower until they reach the air sacs (alveoli) that make up the spongy look of the lungs.

Asthma is caused when the airways are inflamed or contracted.

When asthma is under control, the airways are open and air freely flows in and out of lungs. When asthma attacks the airways get constricted and swollen.

The production of mucus also increase that cause further obstruction in the airways. In this way, a person can hardly inhale and exhale, causing coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath.

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HONG KONG (Reuters) – Infants treated with common pain reliever “paracetamol” may have a higher risk of developing eczema and asthma, at the age of 6 or 7, a large study covering children in 31 countries has found.

The study was published in the journal Lancet along with two different studies, which reveal that runny noses and wheezing in early days of life may be clear sign of asthma.

In the first study, researchers analyze data of more than 205,000 children and came to know that paracetamol use in infancy was associated with a 46 percent higher risk of asthma by the time the children were 6 or 7 compared to those never exposed to the drug.

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People, who were present within the premises of World Trade Center, at the time it was attacked in 2001, have developed more chances of asthma as the general population, a new investigation of public health registry data has found.

The data from the World Trade Center Health Registry, tracks health effects two to three years after the attack. It conclude that three percent of adult residents and workers who were there at the time of attack, soon subsequently have developed asthma, two times the rate of fresh diagnosed asthma in the general population for the same span.

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