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The Relationship Between Eczema And Asthma

The Relationship Between Eczema And Asthma

The world is filled with diseases for which nobody has found a cure yet; some of these diseases are very severe while others just cause discomfort. The symptoms for many of these diseases can be adequately managed by medication but for some of them there is nothing that can really be done. Most of these diseases are unrelated to each other and have no real connections to any other diseases. But there are a few cases, like with the diseases known as eczema and asthma, where a link between them can be proven – where having one makes you much more likely to develop the other.

Eczema is a type of skin condition that’s characterized by inflammation of the epidermis, or outer layer of the skin that can often be painful. Eczema comes in varying degrees of severity and has a variety of symptoms including skin swelling, skin crusting, blistering, cracking, flaking, redness, itching and even bleeding. There are medications known to treat eczema that are known as corticosteroids. They are very effective at controlling the symptoms of the disease but they cannot cure it yet.

Asthma is a chronic inflammation that occurs in the lungs that causes the airways to contract and narrow; this makes breathing difficult to almost impossible in some cases. Asthma is one of the world’s most common diseases – 7% of the people in the United States have it and over 300 million people worldwide do. Asthma symptoms include shortness of breath even when the body is at rest; a chronic cough; nighttime coughing and tightness in the chest. There are different severity levels of asthma; it ranges from mild to severe enough to cause death and while it can usually be adequately controlled with medication it cannot be cured either.

These two diseases seem unrelated at first; after all, how can a skin disease cause someone to begin suffering from something like asthma? However, nearly 50% of children – especially young children – who develop eczema will go on to develop asthma in a short period of time. Scientists have discovered why: when skin is damaged by eczema is secretes a substance that gets carried through the bloodstream – and into the lungs. This substance ends up circulating in the bloodstream – and through the lungs, then sets off asthma-like symptoms that develop into full-blown asthma, which is why young children who develop eczema will go on to also have asthma.

This is an invaluable discovery to the medical world. They now believe that if they can begin aggressively treating eczema and if they can make sure that the body doesn’t begin making that substance then most of the children who have eczema will not go on to develop asthma as well. If scientists can successfully do this, it will help save children from needlessly developing asthma.