New research has found that cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) is highly elevated in the blood of people with asthma, enabling diagnosis and possibly severity determination with a simple blood test.
“What we discovered is a specific transporter, a protein on the membrane of airway smooth muscle cells, allows cAMP to leak into the blood,” senior investigator Reynold Panettieri, MD, vice chancellor for Translational Medicine and Science at Rutgers University, said in a statement. “For decades, we believed that an enzyme called phosphodiesterase was the critical factor in decreasing cAMP. We now refute that and say this transporter simply leaks it out.”
Panettieri and colleagues analyzed blood samples from 87 patients with asthma, 39 of which had severe asthma, and 273 participants without asthma. They found that cAMP levels were consistently higher in the blood of asthma patients by up to 1000 times and correlated with disease severity. The findings may offer a new tool for monitoring patient conditions. “It’s really difficult to do lung function tests in kids under the age of 5,” Panettieri said. “However, our data suggests that if you just did a pinprick, maybe you could diagnose kids who can’t access or do lung function tests.” To read the full story.