Asthma is one of the most common chronic health diseases that affects over 260 million people worldwide and is responsible for over 450,000 deaths each year across the globe. Most of these deaths are preventable with access to recommended treatments.
What is Asthma?
Asthma is a common lung condition that causes mild breathing difficulties.
It affects a range of people in all ages and usually develops during childhood, however it can also develop in adulthood on rare occasions for those who have never had symptoms of the condition before.
There’s currently no cure for Asthma, but there are some simple treatments that can help to remedy the symptoms and keep the condition under control so that it doesn’t have a negative impact on your quality of life
Symptoms of Asthma
Some commonly presenting symptoms of Asthma include:
- A whistling sound when breathing (wheezing)
- Breathlessness
- A tight chest, which may feel like a band is tightening around it
- Coughing
These symptoms can sometimes get temporarily worse. This is often known as an asthma attack.
Asthma can usually be diagnosed from your symptoms and some simple tests with your GP.
Your GP will probably be able to diagnose it within the surgery, but they may refer you to a specialist if they’re not sure or if the tests have unclear results.
Causes and Treatments for Asthma
Asthma is caused by swelling and inflammation of your breathing tubes that help to carry air in and out of your lungs. This makes your breathing tubes highly sensitive, and so they temporarily narrow as a protective reaction.
This reaction may happen randomly or happen after exposure to a trigger.
Common triggers of Asthma include:
- Allergies (to house dust mites, animals or pollen, for example)
- Smoke
- Air pollution or Colder air
- Intense exercise
- Infections and illnesses such as common colds or flu symptoms
Identifying and avoiding your asthma triggers can help you keep your symptoms under control.
Asthma symptoms can usually be controlled with common treatments and remedies.
Most people who have Asthma will lead normal, and active lives, although some people who suffer with more severe cases of Asthma may have ongoing problems and require further treatments to aid their quality of life.
Asthma is normally treated by using an inhaler, which is a small device that lets you breathe in medicines that alleviate the tightness in your chest and airways and helps you to breathe regularly again.
The main types of inhalers are:
- Reliever inhalers – these kinds of inhalers are used when a person needs to quickly relieve asthma symptoms for a short time
- Preventer inhalers – this type of inhaler is used every day to prevent asthma symptoms happening.
- Some people also need to take tablets to aid their Asthma symptoms.
Asthma Awareness Day 2025
May 2nd is World Asthma Day, an annual event organised by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) to improve asthma awareness and care around the world.
Awareness around Asthma care is still necessary and needed across the world. The NRAD report, published in May 2014, was the first national investigation of asthma deaths in the UK. It identified many avoidable factors and made key recommendations to help improve Asthma care and attempt to reduce the number of deaths caused by untreated Asthma.
The first World Asthma Day was held in 1998, and was celebrated in more than 35 countries in conjunction with the first ‘World Asthma Meeting’ held in Barcelona, Spain.
Participation has increased with each World Asthma Day held since then, and the day has become one of the world’s most important asthma awareness and education events.
How to Get Involved in Asthma Awareness
There are many different ways you can get involved with Asthma awareness day this year. In celebration of World Asthma Day 2025, the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) has chosen the theme “Make Inhaled Treatments Accessible for ALL”.
The organisation hope to emphasize the need to ensure that people with asthma can access inhaled medications that are essential for both controlling underlaying or untreated Asthma and treating Asthma attacks.
There are lots of activities that encourage you to help educate people about Asthma and why Asthma screening is so vital.
Here are some great ideas you can host or get involved in to help the cause on Asthma Awareness Day:
- Hold a public open day or a free-of-charge asthma screening clinic at your local hospital or surgery— secure sponsorship from a newspaper or pharmaceutical company
- Organize a hike for people with asthma and their friends, led by a health care provider who can educate the group about managing asthma in an outdoor environment.
- Set up a display of asthma information, treatments, and the relationship between uncontrolled asthma and hospitalization.
- Make learning about asthma control fun by creating games for children that will educate them about asthma control.
Clinical Trials & Scintigraphy For Asthma
Once useful way to help improve the treatment and diagnosis of Asthma is via clinical trials.
Clinical trials for Asthma will usually focus on evaluating new medications and treatment combinations to help patients to manage their Asthma symptoms.
Within this, clinical trials also help to investigate a range of approaches to help to reduce Asthma symptoms that are likely to lead to an Asthma attack, these approaches may also help to improve lung function, and assess the effectiveness of new inhalers, particularly for patients with severe asthma.
Clinical trials for Asthma may also involve testing out new drugs and treatments, testing a variety of dosage for Asthma medication, or test new combination therapies to help to improve treatment of the disease. A clinical trial will often recruit volunteers who have Asthma at various severities to help them to study the impact of changes in treatments or dosages on their Asthma symptoms and their overall quality of life.
Scintigraphy
Gamma scintigraphy plays a vital role in drug product development, and helps to facilitate the testing of various dosage formats.
The data collected from Scintigraphy enables us to gain a detailed understanding of variables within medication and devices used to administer it. Scintigraphic data can inform critical decision-making in the drug development process for Asthma in optimising key drug development programs and improving the cost-effectiveness of research into Asthma treatments and preventatives.
CRO Services With Simbec Orion
At Simbec Orion, we strive to provide the best clinical trial management services and other key testing resources such as Gamma scintigraphy to provide efficient and effective improvements to medicinal research, allowing for further development of treatments and therapies for common diseases. Contact us today to see how we could help to optimise your project.