Posted on 11/06/2025 6:08:37 AM PST by Red Badger
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University say their discovery of new inflammatory molecules could transform medical treatment.
For many years, scientists believed they had a solid grasp of the biological processes behind asthma, a condition marked by lung inflammation that narrows airways and makes breathing difficult.
They pointed to molecules known as “leukotrienes,” which are released by white blood cells in response to airway irritation or allergens, as the primary cause. These molecules trigger a chain reaction that tightens airways, and several drugs have been designed to block this process.
However, a research team at Case Western Reserve University suggests the real culprits might be different.
“We’ve found molecules that are alike in structure but generated through a completely different chemical pathway in the body,” said lead researcher Robert Salomon, the Charles Frederic Mabery Professor of Research in Chemistry. “We think the molecules we’re calling ‘pseudo leukotrienes,’ may be the dominant players in the inflammatory cascade that causes disease.”
This discovery could shift how scientists approach the treatment of asthma and other inflammatory disorders, potentially extending to neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. The study, supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, has been published online in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
The ‘flames’ of oxidation
The presumed culprits in inflammatory diseases—the leukotrienes—are formed under the control of enzymes that transform lipids, or fatty molecules. By contrast, the pseudo leukotrienes Salomon and his team discovered, are formed by adding oxygen to lipids by molecules called “free radicals.”
“The free radical process is almost like an explosion or a fire,” said Salomon, who is also professor of ophthalmology in the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. “It’s just like when oxygen reacts with fuel and you get flames. It can easily get out of control.”
People who suffer from asthma may lack enzymes and antioxidant molecules that normally keep a damper on free radicals by scavenging for and destroying them.
The leukotrienes and their mimics initiate inflammation by fitting into a receptor, like a key in an ignition, starting a molecular cascade that constricts the airways of asthmatics. Effective asthma drugs like Singulair block the ignition so the key won’t fit.
“The real importance of this discovery is the possibility of treating these diseases with drugs that prevent the free radical process or moderate it rather than drugs that block the receptor,” Salomon said.
Inflammation: a curse or a benefit?
Not all inflammation is harmful. The body needs inflammation to direct white blood cells to the site of a wound to heal, and it is also involved in memory and development.
Asthma drugs are being repurposed off-label to treat neurological diseases. But these treatments could also block the beneficial effects of the leukotrienes.
“If the molecules that are causing the problem are not the leukotrienes but these other molecules,” Salomon said, “a better treatment would be to just stop the formation of these other molecules rather than gumming up the ignition.”
The study
Salomon and his colleagues used their decades of experience studying the oxidation of lipids—and some chemical intuition—to guess that pseudo leukotrienes existed. They made the molecules in the laboratory to develop methods to detect them.
They obtained urine samples from patients diagnosed with mild or severe asthma and compared them to urine from people who don’t suffer from the disease.
Not only were pseudo leukotrienes found in the asthma patients’ urine, but also the amounts correlated directly to the severity of the disease. Severe asthma sufferers or even those suffering mild asthma had four to five times more than the controls. The researchers suggest this could be a new biomarker to test for the severity of disease and monitor the effectiveness of therapies.
The researchers’ next plan is to investigate whether these pseudo leukotrienes are involved in other respiratory diseases, like respiratory syncytial virus (commonly known as RSV) and bronchiolitis in babies, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Reference:
“Radical-induced Lipid Oxidation Produces a Torrent of Leukotriene-like Agonists in Severe Asthma”
by Si-Yang Liu, Mikhail Linetsky, Abby Hite, Yu-Shiuan Cheng, Masaru Miyagi, Serena C. Zhu, Hong Zeng, Siqi Huang, Myra Qin, Emma Sintic, Carolyn M. Koutures, Abigail Meneses, Olivia R. Laniak, Sailaja Paruchuri, Lakshminarayan R. Teegala, Kaixi Cui, Fariba Rezaee and Robert G. Salomon, 15 October 2025, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jaci.2025.09.027
Funding: National Institutes of Health, National Eye Institute
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Honest to God, we know far less than our self absorbed, arrogant little minds think is the case.
It doesn’t matter what the excuse is, the bottom line is that we get things wrong all the time and even things we teach as “facts” and as basic as a food pyramid as taught to me in the 1980-1990s is “full of shit.”
This actually looks like interesting and productive work. Hell of a long list of authors, and look at how many are Asian.
When that food pyramid first came out it was derided and scoffed at. People were shamed into accepting it. The food industry took it and ran with it, now Americans are fatter and sicker than ever.
But nobody will ever be held accountable, at least not in this world..........
I always figured the increase in asthma cases in recent decades was fueled comparably to the increases in polio cases years ago.
A lot of asthma may be tied to the hyper-vaccination schedule, but back in the day, when they cleaned up the water systems (and not using public well pumps which wound up contributing cholera outbreaks), they also eliminated a lot of the polio virus that was commonly found in water.
Early introduction to small amounts of polio virus allowed folks to develop some immunity. However, when they cleaned up the water, polio cases exploded.
I suspect a lot of asthma comes from cleaning up indoor air. Humans, after all, spent tens of thousands of years warming themselves with indoor fires. In fact, if you recollect the Otzi the Iceman, his dissection showed that his lungs were heavily blackened.
So it’s likely that a little bit of pollution can be good for you.
I also suspect all the fragrances in EVERYTHING and the wide spread use or *air fresheners in plug ins or sprays, contributes to the rise in asthma cases and breathing problems.
Probably right. As much as I like the smell of those scented candles (I always sniff them in the store), I wouldn’t want to be inundated w/the paraffins floating around.
Bttt
My 3 daughters currently aged 45, 38 and 30 had one vax for all three.
My wife dummied up the paperwork for school but during an office visit they weighted my youngest daughter in another room and gave her an injection. I don’t know which one but 3 days later she had an asthma attack, which she never had before that.
She has had breathing issues ever since.
Researchers have discovered that GERD can trigger asthma symptoms. In addition, GERD is more common in people with asthma than in the general population. Individuals whose asthma is especially hard to treat appear to be more prone to GERD than other affected persons.
Generally speaking, reflux may cause asthma symptoms in two ways.
1) The stomach acid that leaks back into the esophagus creates a chain reaction leading to asthma symptoms. The refluxed gastric acid irritates the nerve endings in the esophagus generating signals to the brain. Subsequently, the brain responds with impulses to the lungs that stimulate the muscle and mucus production in the airways. The small airways of the lungs then constrict, resulting in asthma symptoms.
2) In many cases, physicians believe that the refluxed stomach contents enter the lungs directly. This situation is called aspiration. The foreign material is a potent irritant for the airways, creating wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and other symptoms of asthma.
Some experts believe that asthma also may trigger GERD, when breathing difficulties or certain asthma medications cause the esophageal sphincter muscle to relax and allow stomach contents to reflux — completing a troublesome, potential vicious cycle.
So ... The Science ISN’T settled?
Back in the 60’s, asthma supposedly was caused by eating things with wheat in them. Like bread.
But isn’t that the truth about a lot of things?
The environmental movement has been abused since the 1970s?
How often has the national security flag been waived around just to find out it was BS?
IMHO, we as voters and consumers have to be extra diligent in our duties lest we want to be played like pawns as in Covid.
This is especially true in a world where access to accurate, timely, non biased information presenting BOTH sides of the issue is often absent. The “free” news isn’t really free.
Unless you’re a serious critical thinker and like to dig around, turning rocks over because you like to see whats under them, you’re just going to be steered in some direction which benefits some political or economic interest which are often one and the same thing.
Cui bono...... Follow the money................
Ultimately, yes.
Money is the best way to organize society.
It gives the actual consumer the power and sets demand correctly, thinks in terms of ROI, manages risk well, holds people and business accountable through a bottom line. It promotes innovation and productivity.
There is always a “but” after such a statement. Today we have monopolies and oligopolies reminiscent of when the this nation had Robber Barron’s in big pharma, the media and tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist).
Today have markets that are skewed by heavy government influence either through their selective spending (Google was catapulted in the lead that way, 32% of all money in health care is federal) or regulation. When government decides what car you should buy (Biden’s EV policy), Obama decided trans folks get sex changes paid for by insurance, and the EPA controls what lightbulb you get to buy and how much water a toilet may use per flush, can we really still talk about a “free market” or economy?
Finally and probably the worst of all, when a society has no moral underpinning anymore, when those cultural attributes which make a society thrive become obstacles, when right and wrong has been replaced with situational dependent ethics which are inconsistent, you can get some grotesque outcomes: late term abortions, puberty blockers for teens...
I don’t want to sound like a doom and gloom type, but I guess I am on this issue. IMHO at best, a Trump represents a short little reprieve from a social and long term economic decline, where occasionally you get a Reagan that slows or temporarily reverses things, but we then have 5 Presidents in between that do no more than manage this decline because nihilism and hedonism sell well to the masses and you now have this idea of enterprise and making money, but without any true morals (example: Amazon).
Any real world, practical advice asthma sufferers can take away from this article — besides the urgency for unlimited more funding to study their new theory?
I know it is a lucrative business to advise that there is no cure for their particular disease except to raise unlimited more funding for these researchers — while advising that anybody who claims they have a cure, is a charlatan, and should not be trusted.
Instead, the disease becomes more rampant until everybody has it — like AIDS, Covid, Alzheimer’s, colorectal cancers, transgenderism, drug dependency, etc.— wiping out the human race.
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