World Asthma Day is an annual event hosted by the Global Initiative for Asthma to raise asthma awareness and care across the world. The theme for World Asthma Day 2022 is ‘Closing Gaps in Asthma Care.’
Asthma is a chronic lung disease in which inflamed airways are constricted, resulting in wheezing, chest tightness, coughing, and dyspnea that can range from moderate to life-threatening.
Asthma affects around 7–10% of children and approximately 7–9% of adults globally, making it a serious public health concern. The majority of deaths from the disease occur in underdeveloped countries. One of the goals of the Global Initiative for Asthma is to enhance care for asthma patients in these nations. The Global Initiative for Asthma has sponsored World Asthma Day since 1998, an annual event held on the first Tuesday of May to increase awareness of the illness.
A type of autoimmune white blood cell called a mast cell plays an important role in allergic lung inflammation with the highest numbers of these cells being found in a person’s skin, lungs and intestinal tracks. Mast cells are activated to release inflammatory mediators by a wide variety of different antigens, resulting in more rapid and longer-term inflammatory responses.
Soft X-ray tomography has and continues to play a vital role in helping disease researchers and drug developers to provide significant insights into mast cells at the organelle level. The paper referred to below describes how soft x-ray tomography provides significant insights into mast cell activation at the organelle level. Mast cells play an important role in allergic responses. During activation, these cells degranulate, allowing numerous mediators stored in the granules to be released. Some of the mediators produced by the granules might trigger allergic reactions like asthma and allergic rhinitis. Thus, the further study of how mast cell granule contents are released is important to the understanding of allergic diseases.
Nanoimaging granule dynamics and subcellular structures in activated mast cells using soft X-ray tomography
Huan-Yuan Chen, Gerd Schneider, et.al