Question: How is the immune system linked to asthma ?

Stefan Piatek answered on 15 Mar 2013:

Great question. It’s really interesting because we used to think it was only about the immune system, now it looks like both the airway cells and the muscle that surround them also have more of an active role in asthma.

As for the immune system, let’s say your allergic to pollen, specific types immune cells recognise the pollen as something that they think is an infection and two things happen. One thing that they do is that they activate other immune cells. These newly activated cells and the ones which detected the pollen release all kinds of things that attract in other immune cells, make your airway cells and muscle cells inflammatory (angry!), this causes your lungs to actually change their structure!

Let me know if you want more detail or if anything isn’t clear!