Asthma linked to nasal inflammation

Asthmatics who do not respond well to asthma treatment are likely to have nasal inflammation known as rhinitis. Rhinitis is the swelling of the mucous membrane in the nose due to irritation or congestion resulting in a runny nose, itching, and sneezing. Asthma and rhinitis share many similarities and the prevalence of rhinitis among asthmatics is quite high. Brazilian researchers studied 557 patients with severe asthma, out of which 31 percent had moderate-to-severe rhinitis, 54 percent had mild rhinitis and 15 percent did not have rhinitis. It was found that patients with moderate-to-severe rhinitis were more than 3 times as likely to visit the emergency room during the 12 months that they were followed than the others. By the end of the follow-up, they were also almost 3 times as likely to show a less than 10 percent improvement in symptoms of asthma and were more than 12 times as likely to have uncontrolled asthma. A positive correlation between the severity of rhinitis and asthma was also established. The researchers attribute the relationship between rhinitis and asthma to the fact that both these conditions are the manifestations of the same disease affecting the entire airway for, which the degree of severity of the upper and lower airway processes is correlated.