One in 15 people in the US have asthma, but in our nation’s inner cities, it’s one in four who have the condition that makes it so hard to breathe. Mary Bubala reports a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center has isolated a major reason why.
Six-year-old Collin MacLaurin lives just west of downtown Baltimore in a rowhome. The first grader has suffered with asthma for several years, having attacks at any time of the day and he’s allergic to so many things.
“Cats, mice, mice droppings, dust, outside, inside allergies, just a whole list of things and I didn’t even know,” said his grandmother, Lavinia Dean.
Dean enrolled her grandson in a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, hoping it would help Collin.
Dr. Elizabeth Matsui’s research has proven that mouse allergen is a major cause of asthma in Baltimore City children.
“These kids who were allergic to mice and exposed to high levels of the allergen were in the hospital more frequently for asthma, had more asthma symptoms, needed more rescue inhaler use,” Matsui said.
Dr. Matsui now has NIH funding for a followup study that will help families get and keep mice out of their homes.
“Houses that have shared walls in older houses–mice can get into homes in cracks that are no bigger than a pencil,” Matsui said.
It’s a problem for so many who live in Baltimore City’s rowhomes, no matter how clean and tidy you keep your home.
The program at Hopkins has helped Dean combat mice and other allergens.
“They have been very informative of how to manage my home to help him with his allergies because there are a lot of things in the house that I was not even aware of that could possibly trigger his asthma,” Dean said.
Dr. Matsui also hopes to test allergy shots on children with asthma and see if that’s effective helping them deal with the mouse allergen.
http://wjz.com/health/asthma.johns.hopkins.2.1883263.html