The Real Cause Of Chronic Sinus Infection
Chronic sinusitis affects millions and millions of people each year . According to the National Center of Health Statistics Chronic sinus infection is one of the most common chronic diseases in the United States. When someone experience chronic sinus ,this infection will produce nose and sinus problems characterized by stuffy nose, loss of sense of smell, postnasal drip, nasal discharge, and head and face pain lasting three months or longer. It notably decreases vitality and general health,the quality of patients' lives, impairing physical and social functioning, according to the Mayo Clinic researchers.
According to a study undertaken by The Mayo Clinic in 1999,it has been found that fungus is likely the cause of nearly all cases of chronic sinusitis.
Those Patients with debilitating and painful chronic sinus infections may no longer need to worry about developing resistance to the antibiotics they rely on for symptom relief. According to another Research undertaken by the Brigham and Women's Hospital ,it has been shown that patients with chronic sinus infections do not appear to develop individual resistance to antibiotics when diagnosed and treated using a targeted approach.
The lead researcher of Mayo Clinic ear, nose and throat specialist Jens Ponikau, M.D teaches against what has been thought worldwide about the origin of chronic sinus infection: namely an inflammatory cells break down, releasing toxic proteins into the diseased airway tissue. They have discovered that these toxic proteins are released into the mucus, and not in the tissue. Therefore, scientists might have to take not only the tissue but also the mucus into account when trying to understand what causes chronic sinus infections and probably other airway diseases.
According to Dr Ponikau ,this findings could significantly change the way chronic sinus infection is treated as this finding suggests a beneficial effect in treatments that target primarily the underlying and presumably damage-inflicting nasal and sinus membrane inflammation, instead of the secondary bacterial infection that has been the primary target of treatments for the disease.
In addition to that, some specialists have already started to change the way they do surgery for patients with chronic sinus infections. They now focus on removing the mucus, which is loaded with toxins from the inflammatory cells, rather than the tissue during surgery. By leaving the mucus behind might predispose sinus sufferers for early recurrence of the chronic sinus infection.
A team of researchers under the supervision of DR Ponikau found that in chronic sinus infection in patients activates white blood cells (eosinophils) cluster in the nasal and sinus mucus and scatter a toxic protein (major basic protein) onto the nasal and sinus membrane. While the most important basic protein was not distributed in the nasal and sinus tissue, the level of this protein in the mucus of chronic sinus infection patients far exceeded that needed to damage the nasal and sinus membranes and make them more susceptible to infections such as chronic sinus infection.
During such an investigation Dr. Ponikau and fellow researchers collected specimens from 22 consecutive Mayo Clinic chronic sinus infection patients undergoing endoscopic sinus surgery. The sinus specialist extracted the maximum possible tissue and mucus during the sinus surgery. The specialists also extracted tissue and mucus from healthy patients undergoing septoplasty, surgery to fix a deviated septum, for comparison with the specimens from the chronic sinus infection patients. Through many different forms of laboratory examination of the tissue and attached mucus, the investigators observed an abundance of major basic protein throughout the nasal and sinus mucus in all 22 specimens, but not in the tissue.
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