Key points from today’s guests:

Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer, The University of Kansas Health System

• People with asthma can live healthier, more active lifestyles, but managing asthma can be a challenge, especially when air quality drops, the humidity goes up, the temperature goes up, allergies pick up, or their standard therapy stops working.
• There are also millions of children living with asthma and it can be difficult to get young children to use an inhaler.
• It's a chronic disease and there is currently no cure.
• It affects an estimated 27 million people in the United States or roughly one in 12 people -- and that includes 4.5 million children and adolescents.
• Allergens and irritants can make the inflammation around the airway worse over time, and asthma can remodel your airways permanently, making it more narrow and reducing your lung function.

Leah Hostetter, caring for daughter with pediatric asthma

• Leah's baby, Charlotte, has been hospitalized for breathing problems before, but now is on daily medication.
• Charlotte was nine months old when the family had their first family vacation to Florida. They noticed that she was struggling breathing and within a few hours, she started to stop eating and drinking.
• They took her to the closest pediatric ER in Florida, and she tested positive for RSV and ended up in the ICU for about a week.
• She has struggled with her breathing and ever since then and she's actually had two more hospitalizations.
• In this most recent hospitalization in January, she was put on an asthma action plan.
• Leah recommends for any parents, you know your child better than anyone else, so if you think something is off, trust your gut and take your kid to a doctor and continue to advocate.

Hailey Wank, living with severe allergies and asthma

• At three or four months old, she had her first bout of pneumonia and then after that, it would be every so many months where she would have exacerbations with breathing issues and then it's persisted her whole life.
• Now as a mom of three and working full time, she manages her asthma.
• She has a daily maintenance inhaler, is on other medication and takes allergy medicine.
• She uses an asthma action plan -- always having her inhaler with her and in places around the house.
• She said there is hope that you can continue to live a normal life and you can grow out of it to an extent.

Dr. Selina Gierer, allergist and immunologist, The University of Kansas Health System

• When we think of the immune response in asthma, it is usually that allergic part, not an autoimmune disease. It can be an overwhelming inflammation generated by exposures that you have on a day-to-day basis.
• For example, cat dander or dust mite, whichever the part of house dust you're allergic to, induces a chemical cascade that induces inflammation in the chest that causes asthma symptoms.
• For some jobs, working with asthma can be difficult. Just reaching out to your physician and asking them to help be there and advocate for you in that work environment can be helpful.
• There is an asthma predictive index that helps us understand if a child who has wheezing early on in their life will go on to have asthma later.
• These include things like a parent history of asthma or if the child has tested positive for either food allergies or allergies in the air.
• Specialists – allergists and pulmonologists -- can help determine if that child has a propensity to having asthma long term.

Dr. Shawn Sood, pediatric clinical care physician, The University of Kansas Health System

• In pediatric asthma, it's more male patients. And sometimes symptoms can be intermittent in nature. And in adult patients with asthma, there's a more female predominance and symptoms can be more persistent.
• Adult patients may require their medication every single day. While sometimes in a subsection of kids, they can just require medications independently if they have an asthma attack or an exacerbation.
• We try to do a scoring system to see what certain triggers that child has at home or at school.
• One out of three hospitalizations for pediatric patients are related to asthma and so the big theme today is really preventative care.
• About 70 percent of patients that I see at the age of seven with asthma will not have asthma in adulthood. I do want to share a little bit of optimism that we can outgrow asthma, but definitely there is a subset of patients that persist into adulthood because of all these various factors.
• Talk to your pediatrician to develop an asthma action plan to prevent systemic steroids and stay out of the hospital.

Dr. Mario Castro, division chief, Pulmonary Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, The University of Kansas Health System

• We have some patients that allergies are a big driver of asthma, but there are other patients were allergies is really not such a problem for them. And there are other things that we need to address to get their asthma under control.
• We are excited that with the some of the newest personalized medicine approaches that we're as actually getting about one out of five patients into remission. And, and we may not get a cure yet, but we're getting people into remission.
• Access is a huge issue, because it's not only just access to health services, but it's also getting access to the medications. We really have a difficult situation where some of these medicines are costing our patients $300-$400 for a single inhaler every month. And the cost of asthma medications is really high and of concern for us for such a common chronic disease.

·        Unfortunately, most children are exposed to RSV in the first couple years of life. We know that if you end up in the hospital, 60 percent of those children with RSV by age six will have asthma. That's a big number.

• I have to advocate for participating in research. These new medications that we have wouldn't been possible without the research that we've been doing here at KU and other places to really discover whether or not these medications are effective and safe.
• I encourage everybody to go to the American Lung Association website for great information. There's also great information at KU website where you can go to the pulmonary or the allergy division and learn about the studies that we're doing here.

Friday, Aug. 2 at 8 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. THYROID PROBLEMS CREATE VAGUE SYMPTOBUT FATIGUE, THIRST, AND MUSCLE PAIN CAN ALL CONNECT BACK TO THE GLANDS IN YOUR NECK. THE CHALLENGE AND BENEFIT OF CATCHING THYROID PROBLEMS EARLY!

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