Recent cold, dry Canadian air tough on asthmatics

DOVER, Mass. — And suddenly, this weekend, it wasn’t summer anymore as an unusually cold, dry, Canadian air mass settled over New England. The temperature at Logan Airport Sunday morning dropped to 44 degrees, about 12 degrees below average and within two degrees of setting a record low.

Sarah Puerini of Dover didn’t feel the change in her bones, she felt it in her lungs.

“Rough breathing, normal activities just kind of getting winded and using my inhaler way too many times during the day,” she said.

Puerini is one of the more than 25 million Americans living with asthma, a disorder she developed in her late teens to early twenties. Unlike some asthmatics, Puerini’s lungs react less to triggers such as allergens and more to environmental factors, such as cold weather. She experienced one asthmatic attack, for example, after sitting through a Patriots playoff game at Gillette Stadium.

Little wonder the past week or so has been tough going for the Dover Mom of three, with complaints of chest tightness and feelings of incomplete lung function.

Cold, dry air is a common trigger of asthmatic attacks, especially when it comes on as suddenly as it did this weekend, said Dr. Caroline Sokol, an allergist and immunologist at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital.

“It’s a shock to our lungs," she said. "So we actually have sensory nerves. We can sense these differences in temperature, differences in humidity.”

But there’s a difference in the way asthmatic lungs react to those changes versus normal lungs.

“People with asthma are feeling that a little bit more intensely,” she said. “And what happens is those sensory nerves will sense this cold air as a sudden danger and it will cause the lungs to constrict in people with asthma. And that can cause an asthma attack.”

Asthma attacks can be deadly.

“This isn’t just, ‘oh I’m feeling a little short of breath,’ or, ‘oh I have a little cough,’” Dr. Sokol said. “This sends people to the emergency room every day. This kills people still in this country.”

In fact, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America estimates 10 Americans die each day from asthma.

Related: Dry Weather Continues

“This is a huge disease, this is an important disease for us to treat,” Dr. Sokol said. “And so asthma needs to be kept under very close control.”

Fortunately, it can be kept under control through the use of medications, most notably inhaled steroids known as glucocorticoids.

“Back in the ’70s, before the use of these inhalers, asthma fatalities, I was told by my predecessors, was quite frequent. Now it’s fairly rare,” said Kedar Deshpande, a pulmonologist at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham. “And it’s hard for people to believe that a simple steroid inhaler can stop someone from dying.”

Keeping asthma under control can ease the transition between seasons, Dr. Sokol said. And over the long-term, can prevent the permanent damage that results from chronic inflammation.

“There are two elements in asthma that we have to think about. One element is the attack, which is very dramatic, very scary,” Dr. Sokol said. “But what really worries me as somebody who takes care of asthma patients throughout their entire lives, is not necessarily the attack, it is the long-term inflammation that changes the structure of the lungs to really shrink down in size almost so that they can’t move the same amount of air they were able to.”

Deshpande said asthma treatment has gotten to the point where the ‘ideal’ is to be symptom-free.

“If you use the steroid inhaler, you should be in good shape,” he said.

Sarah Puerini found her symptoms so uncomfortable she got in touch with her doctor, who put her back on a steroid inhaler.

“And just being back on it for a few days, I feel a little bit of relief, which is nice,” she said.

Puerini’s also grateful the forecast is calling for this early season shot of cold air to be followed by more typical early fall temperatures in the 70s.

Cox Media Group