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Despite being common, there's still mystery around what causes asthma and what happens in the lungs. Researchers have come up with a new theory; programmed cell death of white blood cells doesn't occur in the lungs as it should, causing the airways to become inflammed. Despite being common, there's still mystery around what causes asthma and what happens in the lungs. Someone with asthma has inflammation of their airways, and rather than focus on why the inflammation occurs in the first place, researchers at the University of Cambridge have asked; why doesn't the inflammation go away? And the reason may relate to a very special kind of death. Inflammation is the process of the immune system coming to attack an infection or remove a foreign substance like pollen. But once the white blood cells have done the job, some are programmed to die and the theory is that in people with chronic asthma, this programmed cell death doesn't occur, which means they linger like a bored toddler with nothing to do - and you know what happens then. And when the cells do die, they do so unnaturally, spilling out toxins into the lung tissue. It turns out that preventer medications for asthma like inhaled steroids are very good at switching on programmed cell death - so if the theory is right then it could lead to highly focused, safer medications for asthma and perhaps other inflammatory diseases such as of the kidneys or joints.
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