In today’s world there are many diseases for which nobody can find a cure; some are life-threatening while others just compromise a person’s quality of life. The symptoms for many of these diseases can be adequately managed by medication but for some of them there is nothing that can really be done. Most of these diseases are not related to each other in any way; developing one will not cause someone to develop another. But there are a few cases, like with the diseases known as eczema and asthma, where a link between them can be proven - where having one makes you much more likely to develop the other.

Eczema is basically a skin condition that causes different types of inflammation in the outermost layer of the skin, the epidermis. The symptoms can be very mild or very severe and including things like skin blistering, crusting, cracking, flaking, redness and itchiness, skin swelling and even oozing or bleeding in more severe cases. There are medications known to treat eczema that are known as corticosteroids. They are very effective at controlling the symptoms of the disease but they cannot cure it yet.

Asthma is a chronic inflammation that occurs in the lungs that causes the airways to contract and narrow; this makes breathing difficult to almost impossible in some cases. 300 million people worldwide currently suffer from some type of asthma ranging from moderate to severe; 7% of the US population currently has it, many of them young children. Asthma symptoms include shortness of breath even when the body is at rest; a chronic cough; nighttime coughing and tightness in the chest. Asthma attacks have varying severity levels; they range from mild to severe enough to actually cause death and while asthma can be controlled in most cases with medication, there is no cure.

These two diseases seem unrelated at first; after all, how can a skin disease cause someone to begin suffering from something like asthma? However, 50% of all young children who develop eczema will go on to develop asthma as well. Scientists have discovered why: when skin is damaged by eczema is secretes a substance that gets carried through the bloodstream - and into the lungs. This substance then ends up triggering allergy-like symptoms in the body which explains why many - especially very young children - often develop asthma after they develop eczema.

This is an invaluable discovery to the medical world. Scientists now believe that if they can stop the body from secreting that substance into the bloodstream, they can stop children from developing asthma. If scientists can successfully do this, it will help save children from needlessly developing asthma.

Tags: eczema and asthma, eczema