The Secret Link Between Asthma And Eczema

There are many diseases out in the world that have no cure; some of them are serious while others just complicate lives. 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 in a few cases, like in the case of eczema and asthma, there is reason to suspect that developing one will cause the other one to develop as well.


Eczema is a type of skin condition that's characterized by inflammation of the epidermis, or outer layer of the skin that can often be painful. 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 things like nighttime coughing, a chronic cough and of course shortness of breath that ranges from mild to severe even when at rest. 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.


So how do these diseases, which are seemingly so different, have any connection to each other? However, 50% of all young children who develop eczema will go on to develop asthma as well. Doctors have discovered that when eczema occurs, it causes a substance to be secreted by the body's damaged skin. 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.


For the medical world, this is a huge breakthrough. If scientists can stop the skin from secreting that substance, they can stop children from developing asthma needlessly. If scientists can successfully do this, it will help save children from needlessly developing asthma.