Bronchial asthma is an allergic condition, and because of the obstruction of air into the lungs, causes shortage of breath and wheezy periods and a tightening of the chest.

Bronchial Asthma is a debilitating illness, sometimes it starts when very young if the person has an allergy to dust mites or other indoor allergens, or later in life, caused by stress or smoking. Cold weather and exercise can cause bronchial asthma attacks as the airways constrict abnormally when exposed to these allergens.

Bronchial asthma can affect anyone and an attack can have many causes. Bronchial asthma can be treated by your doctor who can advise you how to reduce indoor and outdoor causes of the bronchial asthma and provide anti inflammatory medications or an inhaler to use when you need it.

Asthma is a chronic relapsing inflammatory disorder characterized by hyperreactive airways, leading to episodic, reversible bronchoconstriction , owing to increased responsiveness of the tracheobronchial tree to various stimuli. Some of these stimuli would have little or no effect on nonasthmatics with normal airways. Most asthma is associated with atopy, which represents increased susceptibility to generate immunoglobulin E (IgE) in response to external allergens .

Those afflicted experience unpredictable disabling attacks of severe dyspnea, coughing, and wheezing triggered by sudden episodes of bronchospasm. Between the attacks patients may be virtually asymptomatic, but in some persons chronic bronchitis or cor pulmonale supervenes. Rarely a state of unremitting attacks (status asthmaticus) proves fatal; usually such patients have had a long history of asthma. In some cases , the attacks are triggered by exposure to an allergen to which the patient has previously been sensitized, but no allergic trgger can be identified. There has been a significant increase in the incidence of asthma in the western world in the past three decades.

Asthma has traditionally been divided into two basic types extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic asthma is initiated by a type 1 hyperssensitivity reaction induced by exposure to an extrinsic antigen. Subtypes include atopic asthma occupational asthma, and allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis. The last-mentioned describes colonization of asthmatic airways with Aspergillus organisms , followed by development of additional IgE antibodies. In contrast, intrinsic asthma is initiated by divese, nonimmune mechanisms, include ingestion of aspirin; pulmonary infections, especially viral; cold ; inhaled irritants;stress and exercise. As with other classification schemes patients often ignore categories and manifest overlapping characteristics. For example , the patient with extrinsic asthma dn increased airway hyperreactivity is also more likely to manifest bronchospasm after exposure to one of the agents associated with intrinsic asthma.

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