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Potential root cause of asthma found

Credit: Yui Mok/PA Wire

Cardiff University scientists have identified the potential root cause of asthma and an existing drug that offers a new treatment.

Researchers, working in collaboration with scientists at King’s College London and the Mayo Clinic (USA), discovered a previously unproven role of a protein (CaSR) in the disease which affects 300 million people worldwide.

The findings have been published in a paper for the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The paper highlights how a class of drugs known as calcilytics manipulate CaSR to reverse all the symptoms of asthma.

Calcilytics were first created to treat the bone disease osteoporosis.

Our findings are incredibly exciting. For the first time we have found a link between airways inflammation, which can be caused by.... allergens, cigarette smoke and car fumes, and airways twitchiness in allergic asthma.

– Professor Daniela Riccardi, Cardiff University School of Biosciences

Asthma UK helped fund the research.

This hugely exciting discovery enables us, for the first time, to tackle the underlying causes of asthma symptoms. Five per cent of people with asthma don’t respond to current treatments so research breakthroughs could be life changing for hundreds of thousands of people.

– Dr Samantha Walker, Director of Research and Policy at Asthma UK