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A campaign starts on the side of who suffers from asthma, through the supervision of specialists, not to use meaningless drugs and understand how to behave in the face of a chronic pathology. This is the proposal di Asthma Zero Week: from 7 to 11 June the experts will be available for free specialist consultations in over 50 specialized centers throughout Italy, bookable, from today, through the toll-free number 800 62 89 89.
The campaign is promoted by FederASMA and ALLERGIE Odv – Italian Patient Federation, with the patronage of the Italian Society of Allergy, Asthma and Clinical Immunology (SIAAIC) and the Italian Society of Pneumology (SIP / IRS).
Treat yourself well with your doctor
About 300 million people in the world are called to living with asthma. Approximately 30 million children and adults under the age of 45 in Europe suffer from this high-impact chronic inflammatory airway disease. Dyspnea, chest tightness, cough and bronchospasm are i main symptoms that require specialist attention.
Having made this necessary introduction, it must be remembered that the Covid-19 health emergency it certainly did not facilitate those who need controls and need to fine-tune the treatments. In particular, care must be taken not to abuse short-acting beta2-agonist bronchodilator drugs: these drugs act on the symptoms and not on the underlying inflammation, and their regular or even frequent may be a sign of poor control of the disease, increasing its risk of exacerbations.
“It is believed that in asthma an increase in airway inflammation contributes to the worsening of symptoms and lung function,” explains Paola Rogliani, Associate Professor of Respiratory Diseases of the Department of Experimental Medicine, University of Rome Tor Vergata, and Director of UOC Respiratory System Diseases at the Emergency and Acceptance Department of the Tor Vergata Polyclinic Foundation, Rome.
The recommendations of the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) prescribe that you no longer use these drugs alone in any step of the treatment of the disease, but recommend that all adults and adolescents with asthma receive “disease control treatment with inhaled corticosteroid, symptom-guided (in mild asthma) or daily, to reduce the risk of severe exacerbations and to control symptoms.”
What happens in times of Covid-19?
The constant treatment of asthma and the prevention of acute symptoms they must not be overlooked or questioned by patients in times of the Covid-19 pandemic: several studies indicate reassuring data for those who, like asthmatics, use inhaled corticosteroids. But it must be said that the susceptibility of asthmatics to infection appears reduced.
“A recent editorial in the British Medical Journal highlighted how there has been a significant decrease in severe asthma exacerbations at the local medicine level and hospital admissions, probably attributable to an increase in demand from patients with chronic pathologies of inhaled corticosteroids linked to a greater sensitivity to the pathology induced by the pandemic and to a better therapeutic adherence than recommended by specialists and scientific societies “, reports Giorgio Walter Canonica, Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Humanitas University and Head of the Personalized Medicine Center Asthma and Allergology at the Humanitas Research Hospital in Rozzano.
Not only that, but a recent study by Paola Rogliani shows that i patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are at lower risk of hospitalization in case of Covid-19. “This result apparently ‘paradoxical‘could be related to the protective effect of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) administered worldwide to most asthma and COPD patients – explains the same expert -. This would indirectly support the evidence that Ics (inhaled cortisone) can improve the clinical course of Covid-19, probably by modulating the expression of receptors that facilitate the entry of the virus into host cells “.
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