Asthma

An active clinical and basic science research program exists in asthma with the Bellevue Asthma Clinic, a program of over 3,000 individuals as the main focus. Epidemiologic studies have been performed with information provided by the Bellevue Hospital Asthma Clinic in collaboration with the Department of Environmental Medicine. Work has been performed to characterize physiologic correlates of longstanding asthma.

The clinic serves as a clinical core for studies in particulate matter pollution and asthma. The clinic is a part of the American Lung Association Asthma Clinical Research Centers, out of which interventional clinical trials are performed. In addition, there is an ongoing gene banking program to study disease modifying genes in asthma and community-based studies of health effects of the World Trade Center destruction are ongoing.

The role of environmental pollutants in the mucosal immune response in asthma is being studied with the use of human bronchial epithelial cells to study signaling pathways, gene transcription, and effector pathways to elicit dendritic cell and lymphocyte involvement. These studies have been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, The American Lung Association, the Stony-Wold Herbert Foundation, the Chest Foundation and the Colton Family Foundation.