Clean Your House To Clear Asthma

Carl Lowe | Nov 07, 2012 | Comments 0

If you suffer asthma, carefully cleaning your house may ease your breathing problems. Otherwise,research shows, when you inhale proteins from bacteria that show up in house dust, you may have an allergic reaction that makes your asthma worse.

“Most people with asthma have allergic asthma, resulting largely from allergic responses to inhaled substances,” says researcher Donald Cook, Ph.D., with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). “Although flagellin (a bacterial protein) is not an allergen, it can boost allergic responses to true allergens.”

“More than 20 million Americans have asthma, with 4,000 deaths from the disease occurring each year,” adds Darryl Zeldin, M.D., NIEHS scientific director and study co-author. “All of these data suggest that flagellin in common house dust can promote allergic asthma by priming allergic responses to common indoor allergens.”