Allergic asthma is an asthma attack triggered by an allergen. How different is it from regular asthma, and how is it treated?
An allergy is an excessive reaction by the immune system to a normally harmless component of the environment called an allergen.
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the bronchial tubes that leads to attacks and difficulty breathing. When these attacks are triggered by an allergen, it is called allergic asthma.
In people with asthma, the bronchial tubes are much more sensitive than in a normal person.
They are narrower and constricted than in healthy people, which prevents air from passing through normally.
This leads to difficulty breathing, wheezing when exhaling, and chronic coughing. Asthma attacks occur when people with asthma are exposed to triggers that further constrict the walls of the bronchial tubes.
In the case of allergic asthma, these factors are primarily allergens: pollen, dust mites, mold, animal hair, or even food allergies.
Environmental pollution or physical exertion can also be involved, as in simple asthma, but the allergic factor dominates here.
Allergic asthma is very strongly linked to the environment
Allergic asthma usually begins in early childhood: before the age of five in 8 out of 10 cases. But in adults, it can manifest itself much later. There are two causes: genetic predisposition and an unfavorable environment, such as exposure to pollutants.
It is the combination of these two factors that leads to this disease, which is particularly prevalent in our time. Environmental changes actually contribute to the onset of allergic asthma attacks.
Air pollution, first and foremost, puts strain on patients’ bronchial tubes, lowering the allergic threshold at which an attack begins.
Climate change also makes pollen more allergenic. If it was already a cause of attacks, now the ones it provokes are becoming stronger.
Allergic asthma is also more common due to microbes. We are surrounded by bacteria, which are mostly beneficial to us, as they train our immune system.
But the environment is changing, and the bacterial flora is evolving: microbes cause more allergies than before.
Allergic cough
An allergic cough is a chronic cough that persists until the allergen is eliminated and can be debilitating for a long time.
In the context of allergies, coughing may be just one symptom in a more complex clinical picture.
Asthmatics and allergic cough
Asthmatics are people who most often suffer from allergies, and therefore from allergic cough. Although anyone can develop allergies, people with asthma are particularly prone to respiratory allergies.
Asthmatics have hypersensitive airways. They will react both during and after exposure to an allergen, and this can vary in duration.
At the moment of contact with the allergen, wheezing and shortness of breath appear. Within a few hours after inhaling the allergen, the following symptoms may appear: inflammation of the respiratory tract (leading to progressive swelling), hypersecretion of particularly sticky mucus.
Avoid allergens and seek treatment
What can be done in these circumstances to maintain a good quality of life? First, avoid the allergen whenever possible. Avoid pets at home, clean intensively to combat dust mites, live in the countryside. But it is not always easy to avoid contact with environmental elements that are present everywhere.
If the allergy is detected at an early stage, patients can be desensitized, for example, to pollen.
Treatment is carried out through gradual exposure to accustom the body to no longer react so strongly to the allergen.
Despite everything, medication is often still necessary. In the event of an attack, patients carry a bronchodilator spray with them, which will widen the bronchial tubes and allow air to pass through them again.
Inhaled corticosteroids and long-acting bronchodilators are valuable aids in the treatment of persistent asthma.
In the most severe cases, doctors may recommend biotherapy. They administer a monoclonal antibody to the patient, which acts on inflammation and allergic reactions.
In addition to treatment, a good understanding of your condition can help reduce the discomfort associated with it. This is the goal of therapeutic education. During group or individual sessions, allergy sufferers and asthmatics learn what the medication is used for, how to avoid attacks, and how to respond if they worsen.
Regardless of the treatment offered, it is important to act quickly when allergic asthma is triggered, because after a while the bronchial tubes become abnormal and can no longer return to their original state.