Air pollution – whether from diesel exhaust in a big city or
cooking-fire smoke in a developing nation – is bad for children
with asthma. But although it’s long been clear that breathing
polluted air worsens lung-tissue inflammation in asthma, the
biological mechanism by which pollution triggers that
inflammation has been unclear. Now, new research by Kari Nadeau,
MD, PhD, assistant professor of pediatric immunology and allergy
at Stanford, helps clarify the mystery. In a paper appearing
online this week in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical
Immunology, Nadeau and colleagues at Stanford and UC-Berkeley
found that asthmatic children who live in an area with high
levels of air pollution had impaired function of their
regulatory T cells, a class of immune cells that keep
inflammation in check. Nadeau, who is also a pediatric
immunologist at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, compared
asthmatic and non-asthmatic kids in two California cities:
Stanford, which has low ambient air pollution, and Fresno, where
the