00:00 c.u.
Man using inhaler
Wide
GV street – traffic pollution (RTV archive)
Chips/fries
in deep fat fryer (RTV archive)
Commuters
walking in London street (RTV archive)
Commuters
in WashingtonDC (RTV archive)
David
Cunningham using Peak Flow indicator
Guide Voice: Asthma - an illness that seems
synonymous with modern life. Lifestyle changes including poor diet
and the stress of day-to-day living have been suggested as
contributing factors, but the simple fact is that asthma is an
enormous problem worldwide with some 300 million currently
estimated with the condition. For the majority the illness is an
unpleasant inconvenience but for some it’s life
threatening.
00:25 SOT: David Cunningham, Patient with
Asthma – “Well, I’ve had asthma all
my life. It stems from…I don’t know if it was
hereditary, my Mother was very chesty as well and in fact died when
she was quite early through an asthma attack. So I’ve had it
more or less all my life; when I was very young I was in and out of
hospital…”
00:47 SOT: Dr Chris Corrigan, Dept. Asthma, Allergy
& Respiratory Science, King’s College London
– “There are all sorts of facets to severe asthma,
patients might have constant symptoms so they can’t do the
shopping, they can’t nip out for a paper, they may wake up
every night coughing and spluttering for breath, they may have very
frightening, severe, repetitive attacks which means they may have
to run to hospital and always there is this sensation of drowning,
which is a very frightening sensation. So severe disease -
there’s that facet of it, there’s the facet that they
can’t go to work, they can’t go to school – it is
one of the leading causes of loss of time at school and work so
they lose gainful employment, they lose their self-esteem. There
are many, many facets to severe asthma.”
01:28 Wide
– corridor, research unit
c.u.
“Asthma, Allergy & Respiratory Research” sign
Researcher
at computer
c.u.
computer screen
Extreme
c.u. computer screen graphic
Guide Voice: Asthma is usually treated very
effectively with inhaled steroids. Unfortunately some people with
more difficult to control asthma often fail to respond to steroids,
even with high doses, limiting their treatment options.
Now new research, from scientists at King’s College
London, based at the MRC-Asthma UK Centre, have discovered that a
simple vitamin supplement may offer improved treatment for the
worst sufferers of this debilitating disease.
01:54 SOT: Dr Chris Corrigan –
“Here at King’s we are particularly interested in
asthmatics who don’t respond very well to treatment. And in
studies we’ve done before we’ve shown that the
inflammatory cells, the immune cells that invade the breathing
tubes of these patients, if they don’t respond clinically
very well to steroids then their inflammatory cells don’t
respond very well either. We’ve been trying to work out why
this is and we don’t know the answer fully just yet but
another approach we’re taking is trying to reverse this trend
and make the inflammatory cells responsive to the steroids
again.”
02:29 Wide
– Laboratory & researcher – Dr Hawrylowicz enters
and talks to researcher
Dr
Hawrylowicz talking to researcher
Reverse
of above
Wide
- Dr Hawrylowicz exits
Guide Voice: The team’s results imply
that steroid treatment works, in part, by inducing the T-cells of
the immune system to synthesise a signalling molecule, called
IL-10. This molecule can inhibit the immune responses that cause
the symptoms of allergic and asthmatic disease.
02:45 SOT: Dr Catherine Hawrylowicz, Dept. Asthma,
Allergy & Respiratory Science, King’s College London
- “We have a very exciting laboratory
observation that we can modify the responsiveness and improve the
responsiveness to steroids by combining steroids with vitamin D3 in
the laboratory. We know we can pass vitamin D3 through patients, we
know we can give patients vitamin D3 and then take their blood
cells and improve their responsiveness to steroids in the
laboratory, now we need to say does this actually correlate with
actual clinical benefit?”
03:11 Researchers
preparing samples for centrifuge
c.u.
of above
Researcher
at centrifuge
2
nd researcher at extraction cabinet
c.u.
of above
GVs
Dr Smurthwaite at her desk
c.u.
Asthma UK logo on co,puter screen
Guide Voice: The team at King’s have gone
on to perform a pilot experiment to test this proposed therapy - to
assess whether the patients’ T-cells were more responsive to
a steroid after taking a vitamin D3 supplement. The test results
were positive and the team are now looking to move towards clinical
trials.
It’s early days yet, but Dr Lyn Smurthwaite, Research
Development Manager at Asthma UK, the charity which funded the
research, is cautiously optimistic.
03:38 SOT: Dr Lyn Smurthwaite, Research Development
Manager, Asthma UK – “Simply taking a
vitamin supplement can appear to make a difference but obviously
this trial needs to be confirmed in a larger study. If that proves
to be the case then it appears to be a very simple intervention
that can make a massive difference to peoples’ lives and
that’s why, at Asthma UK, we’re particularly excited
about it.”
03:56 Pan
across research laboratory
Asthma
inhalers on table
Guide Voice: It seems absurd that something as
simple as a vitamin supplement could make such a difference to a
patient’s response to treatment - but millions of people with
Asthma will hope it really can be that simple.
04:08 End
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