Although asthma affects nearly 340 million people worldwide, there is still no cure. Respiratory failure often occurs in childhood and can cause asthma attacks, where the lungs develop and the airways become congested, allowing breathing and shortness of breath. These attacks are caused by a number of factors, including pollution, allergens, and smoking.
The condition is often treated by inhaling a bronchodilator drug called a beta-agonist, such as Ventolin. During an asthma attack, inhalers release beta-agonist into the airways. This ensures that the muscles in the airway relax, allowing the patient to breathe more easily. But this type of medicine does not work very well for everyone – and there are other options limited to medicines that can be used to treat acute asthma attacks.
But while researching the health benefits of eating “oily” fish such as salmon and mackerel, we found something surprising: omega-3 fatty acids (typically found in such high-level fish), and direct-to-health medications that some of the actions of omega-3 fatty acids, could potentially be used to treat asthma.
Omega-3 fatty acids have many health benefits and generate them in a variety of ways, including by reducing inflammation. This is because they interact with and stimulate a protein called “free fatty acid receptor 4.” This protein is present on the surface of certain cells that control the amount of sugar in the blood. As elevated blood sugar is often associated with diabetes, drugs that activate free fatty acid receptor 4 are being considered as a possible new treatment for type 2 diabetes.
One of the pleasures of a research scientist is that opportunity observations can lead to new insights into completely different areas than those you first studied. Free fatty acid receptor 4 is typically present in the gut and on white fat cells. But when our team investigated where else in the body it could lie, we were surprised to find large numbers of the receptor in the lungs of both mice and humans. We reason that if it was there, it should have a task to do.
Asthma treatment
Given the large numbers of free fatty acid 4 receptors in the lungs, we wondered if proto-drugs (synthetic chemicals that activate free fatty acid 4 receptor) would work just as well as beta-agonists when opened. the airways and perhaps also inflammation in the lungs.
[Read: Here’s why you’ve got cravings even though you’re not hungry]
We first test these chemicals on both live mice and in samples of lung tissue. Initially, we found that activators of free fatty acid receptor 4 actually opened airways that had become in the lungs of mice. However, in mice whose DNA we alter due to lack of free acid receptor 4, these proto-drugs did not work.
We then wanted to know if these compounds also worked effectively when we induced an asthma-like condition in the mice. We did this by letting them get rid of the air-polluting ozone, or inhaling a cigarette smoke. Both are known to induce asthma attacks in humans. Again, we saw that in the mice that had free fatty acid receptor 4, the proto-drugs opened the airways. They had no effect in mice that did not have the receptor.
Of course, mice are not humans – and if our initial observations should have the potential to point to a new treatment for asthma and other respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, we should show that free fatty acid receptor 4 is also present in human lungs.
Using tissue samples from human lungs, we found that free fatty acid receptor 4 was also present – and that the proto-drugs that activate the receptor could relax the human lungs and airways.
Now we need to show that such treatments are just as effective in airway tissue of patients suffering from asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or other related diseases. We will have to show that we can produce improved versions of the proto-medicines that are safe to use. It will also be necessary to demonstrate that they will be more effective in reducing broncho-constriction than people who have difficulty breathing.
All interesting possibilities, when we think about it we started to ask how eating a portion of salmon before eating can be good for you.
This article was republished from The Conversation by Graeme Milligan, Gardiner Professor of Biochemistry and Dean of Research, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow and Andrew Tobin, Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, University of Glasgow under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Next read:
Coral Seeks: How Lab Reproduction Could Restore Wild Reefs
