More than 4 million French people are affected by asthma. This chronic respiratory disease most often develops during childhood, but it can appear at any age. Today, screening is based on a clinical examination, as well as respiratory tests, often followed by allergy tests (skin and/or blood). But “asthma is difficult to diagnose before the age of 5, as it is less easy for a child of this age” to carry out the respiratory tests, according to the European Lung Foundation.
Other diagnostic methods, simpler, rapid and above all accessible to all, are therefore necessary. Researchers at Rutgers University in the United States have “discovered that a simple blood test could make it possible to diagnose asthma and determine its gravity, an advance that could transform the way in which the disease is identified and followed,” they said in a statement.
To develop this blood test, American scientists have based on an observation: “Asthmatic patients have considerably high levels of a molecule called adenosine cyclic monophosphate (ampc) in their blood, sometimes up to 1,000 times higher than in people who do not suffer from asthma”. After having analyzed the blood of asthmatic patients and healthy people, they found that the levels of this molecule were “systematically higher” in asthmatic patients, and that they “were in correlation with the gravity of the disease”.
This discovery could therefore “offer doctors a new tool to monitor their patients’ health” and “follow the response to treatment”. They consider that in the future, their test “could lead to more personalized therapeutic approaches”, and even improve the efficiency of existing treatments, which do not work well in all patients. American researchers are working to improve their test, which “could be available in a year or two,” said Dr. Reynold Panettieri, one of the authors of the study.
