How Are Eczema And Asthma Linked?

There are a number of diseases that have no cure; several of them are serious while some just generally complicate our lives. Their symptoms can be managed, but the medical profession has yet to locate a definitive cure for them. Most of these medical conditions aren't related to one another at all; developing one is not going to cause someone to develop another. Yet in a number of instances, such as when it comes to eczema and asthma, there is reason to believe that developing one will bring about the other one also.

Eczema is a disorder that has an effect on the skin - the epidermis, or outer layer of the skin, gets irritated and tends to be very uncomfortable. The problems can run the gamut from very mild to extremely severe, and consist of skin blistering, cracking, flaking, crusting, itchiness, swelling, and redness, and perhaps bleeding and oozing in more serious instances. There are certain prescription drugs which can be useful to heal eczema, and they are generally known as corticosteroids. These types of medicines are very effective at managing someone's eczema; yet the disease can't be entirely eliminated at this time.

Asthma, meanwhile, entails long term irritation of the lungs in which the air passages end up narrowed so that inhalation becomes strenuous or very nearly impossible. Approximately 7% of the US population has asthma and 300 million people throughout the world suffer from it. Indicators of asthma include shortness of breath, even if resting; nocturnal coughing; a chronic cough that sounds similar to throat-clearing; and tightness in the chest. Asthma has a number of degrees of severity too; attacks run the gamut from mild to moderate. Despite the fact that most of the time it can be controlled by means of medication, it can't be cured, either.

So how do these illnesses, that are seemingly so dissimilar, have any relationship to each other? The relation isn't completely understood, but it's been shown that half of all young children who acquire eczema will go on to develop asthma also. Health care providers have discovered that when eczema manifests, it will cause a substance to be released by the body's damaged skin. This substance winds up circulating in the bloodstream and throughout the lungs, after which it triggers asthma-like problems that ultimately grow into the full-blown disease. That's why young children who develop eczema will often go on to have asthma as well.

For the healthcare society, this is a tremendous leap forward. They now feel confident that if they start aggressively treating eczema and ensure that the body doesn't begin making that substance to start with, then the majority of the kids who get eczema will not go on to acquire asthma. As long as they are triumphant, many hundreds of children will be able to live their lives without this incapacitating disorder.