For how we live.
Most people who presented did not have diagnosed asthma. The investigation into the 2016 epidemic thunderstorm asthma event identified who was at risk, and it was not who health services expected.
Two birth cohorts totalling 9,801 children were sorted into eight developmental patterns. The classic progression was one of them, and one of the smallest.
A placebo-controlled trial in 164 children reduced fine particles 64% and found no improvement in symptoms. A smaller crossover trial found a benefit, but only in children whose asthma was poorly controlled.
Adding an inhaled steroid to the as-needed inhaler roughly halved severe attacks against a short-acting reliever, at a fraction of the daily steroid exposure that maintenance therapy delivers.
Farm-raised children really are protected from asthma, and the mechanism has been traced to microbial exposure and innate immunity. What has not been shown is that household hygiene caused the allergy epidemic.
A global modelling study puts four million new paediatric asthma cases a year on ambient nitrogen dioxide — and finds that 92% of them occur below the WHO guideline concentration.
A 34-million-birth analysis maps how far smoke travels from the fires that make it. A companion review is blunt that what that exposure does, beyond the lungs, is still unsettled.
Two February papers put respiratory virus activity into the models. One finds pollution effects amplified at peak influenza; the other finds them attenuated when rhinovirus is high.
Cedars-Sinai counted a 118% rise in general-illness visits and a 46% rise in heart attack visits over the 90 days after the fires started. Abnormal blood results more than doubled.
A November systematic review screened 120 publications and found five eligible papers, all from the US and Canada. All pointed the same way; none could be pooled with the others.