Scientists at Rutgers Health have discovered that a simple blood test could diagnose asthma and determine its severity, a breakthrough that could transform how the disease is identified and monitored. The paper, which will appear in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, found that patients with asthma have dramatically elevated levels of a molecule called cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) in their blood – sometimes up to 1,000 times higher than in people without asthma.
“What we discovered is a specific transporter, a protein on the membrane of airway smooth muscle cells, allows cAMP to leak into the blood,” said Reynold Panettieri, one of the study’s senior authors and vice chancellor for Translational Medicine and Science at Rutgers University. “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.”
The finding has significant implications for the roughly 1 in 20 Americans with asthma. Currently, diagnosing asthma requires sophisticated breathing tests, typically found only at specialists, that can be challenging for young children. To read the full story.