title: How much do we know about atopic asthma: where are we now?
abstract: Asthma is a common disease in the worldwide and it affects over 3.5 million adults and children in the UK. Asthma is a chronic disease characterized by airway hyperresponsiveness, airway inflammation, airway remodelling and reversible airway obstruction. Inflammatory cells, cytokines, chemokines, adhesion molecules, and mediators are involved in pathogenesis of asthma. Chronic airway inflammation and remodelling are the major characters in asthma, which result in decreased pulmonary function. The precise processes are far understood at moment. Although corticosteroid therapy plus other exiting drugs (bronchodilators and oral leukotriene receptor antagonists) influences many different inflammatory and structural cell types and continues to be as the "gold standard" of therapy in asthma, many thousands have chronic, severe diseases and suffer daily symptoms which make their lives a misery. There remains a clear need for novel approaches to therapy, which will be informed by a clearer understanding of disease pathogenesis, particularly in the target organ where airway inflammation and remodelling, the hallmarks of asthma occur.
authors.affiliation: King's College London, Division of Asthma, Allergy and Lung Biology, MRC and Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma, London, UK. ying.sun@kcl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Sun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ying
authors.forename: Guizhen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Shuyan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gu
authors.forename: Jisheng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhao
mesh_terms: D001249:Asthma / Q000276:immunology* / Q000628:therapy; D006801:Humans; D006969:Hypersensitivity, Immediate / Q000276:immunology* / Q000628:therapy