How is asthma a disease?

  Asthma, or bronchial asthma, is a common and difficult to cure chronic disease, and at the same time it is a disease that is often easily overlooked. In the past, it was thought that asthma was an allergic disease in which the patient was allergic to certain specific substances in the external environment and the body produced a corresponding antibody, causing spasm of the airway smooth muscle and hyper-secretion of mucus, thus triggering wheezing attacks, and the treatment has been mainly aimed at relieving the spasm of the airway smooth muscle.  However, the efficacy of this treatment method is not satisfactory, and many problems are still not satisfactorily solved, such as the application of bronchodilators and short-term systemic hormones like albuterol and aminophylline, which can only relieve the symptoms, but not achieve the purpose of the root cause, and the disease is often recurrent and persistent, or even getting heavier and more frequent, which brings great mental pressure and economic burden to the family. With the progress of medical science and technology, people’s understanding of asthma has been deepened and improved.  Modern medicine has found that asthma is a chronic, diffuse, allergic inflammatory disease of the airways formed by the joint participation of inflammatory mediators and cytokines produced by a variety of inflammatory cells, which makes the airways of susceptible people overly reactive to various stimuli or triggering factors (called airway hyperresponsiveness), causing airway narrowing and increased resistance, manifested by recurrent episodes of coughing, wheezing, dyspnea, night Symptoms such as inability to lie down, restful sleep, and chest tightness.  These symptoms often occur or worsen at night, early in the morning, or after activity. If these conditions are treated promptly and correctly at an early stage or when the disease is not very severe, most patients’ conditions can be cured or well controlled. Sometimes cough is the only symptom that persists without wheezing symptoms, and is also a special form of asthma. Advances in medicine and constant updates in the understanding of the disease have led to fundamental changes in the treatment of asthma, and anti-inflammatory therapy based on inhaled glucocorticoids has brought a boon to the majority of asthma patients.