Severe asthma can strike adults: What symptoms to watch for

Last week we learned of the passing of a former child actress who died from complications from an asthma attack. Christy Knowings was 46 years old and while many folks think of asthma as a manageable childhood condition, her sudden passing services reminded that severe asthma attacks can strike adults. So joining me to talk about these dangers and get some facts about adult asthma is Dr. Giselle Mosnayem. She's an allergist and immunologist with Endeavor Health. Dr. Mosnayem, thank you so much for your time this morning. Let me start off by asking you about the risks and impacts of adult asthma. What does this condition look like? Adult asthma can be a very severe and debilitating condition. There's about 27 million people in the United States living with asthma every day and unfortunately there's about 2,400 emergency department visits, 260 hospitalizations and tragically 10 deaths due to asthma in the United States every day. That is very concerning. How common is this condition for adults? Asthma is a common condition for adults. Severe asthma affects only about 5 to 10 percent of patients with asthma and even though this is a small number of patients with asthma overall, severe asthma leads to daytime and nighttime wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, shortness of breath and as we talked about asthma attacks that can be very unpredictable. When do you know if you have the condition and how do we know if it's asthma as opposed to just seasonal allergies or something that you're just dealing with temporarily? So patients with severe asthma have the symptoms that we talked about, wheezing, coughing, chest tightness and shortness of breath and then we can also listen to their lungs and do some breathing tests and also order some other blood work and sometimes allergy testing to confirm the diagnosis. Okay, with kids going back to school and we've been talking about adults, what is the best way to combat the disease and also just kind inform our kids about this? So back to school is a time that we do see a rise in asthma flares. In the Chicago area, we have a very high ragweed pollen season in the fall and also as kids go back to school and unfortunately they share germs, we see a rise in upper respiratory infections that can trigger asthma. What I would like to share as well though is we have had tremendous advances in treatments for asthma. In addition to inhalers, we now have FDA approved biologic therapies for asthma and these are injectable treatments that can reduce exacerbations by 50 percent or more in the right patient. That's great. So those 10 fatalities you mentioned that typically happen per year, is that way down from where it was decades ago? Absolutely, we have seen a decline in deaths related to asthma because we do have tremendous advances in therapies. However, we still need to work to make sure that in the future there are zero deaths from asthma. Were things exacerbated and this is an ongoing situation, but with regard to wildfire smoke, does that play a role at all in folks with respiratory issues like asthma? Absolutely, the wildfires that we've seen this summer have led to increases in asthma attacks, increases in emergency department visits, hospitalizations. This is very challenging for patients that have asthma and severe asthma. Yeah, a lot of us have noticed that. Dr. Giselle Mosnayan with Endeavor, thank you so much for your time this morning. Thank you.