Animal and clinical study for Treatment of Asthma using Intranasal inhalation of Himalayan salt /
Ayesha Tariq
- 56p. Soft Copy 30cm
Asthma is a non-communicable disease (NCD) that affects airways by narrowing their diameter and eventually causing inflammation in lungs. This has become one of the most frequently diagnosed disorders in the past few decades. In addition, more death due to asthma is recorded in low income countries where treatment is a challenge due to related cost. The purpose of this study is to investigate effects of salt therapy in asthma disease based on clinical study by using human specimen and vet lab study by using Wister rats as asthma model. A cross-sectional survey-based and experimental study was conducted on asthma patients at the Khewra salt mines sanatorium. The survey-based study comprised 107 patients of which 8 were randomly selected for experimental study. Patients of both genders from ages 2 months to 55 years were part of this study. Participants were asked to stay in the Khewra salt mines sanatorium for 10 hours for 10 days. CBC test was performed before and after salt therapy to check the role of pulmonary immune cells in asthmatic patients for diagnostic purposes. Statistical analysis was made based on immune cell count including platelets, eosinophils, monocytes, neutrophils, and lymphocytes. Moreover, in vet lab based study, rats are extensively used as asthma model globally, for this study 5 treatment groups of Wister rats were used. Asthma was induced in rats by combination of Ovalbumin (OVA), alum and Phosphate Buffer Saline (PBS) solution and then diseased rats were exposed to intranasal inhalation of salt aerosols of different concentrations (0.5%, 1%, 3%, 5% and 6%) of pink salt solution for treatment purpose. For obtaining findings, blood samples from their hearts were collected for complete Blood Count (CBC) test for immune cells analysis. The rats were later dissected for histological analysis of lungs. The results of survey-based study indicate that salt therapy is emerged as an advanced treatment method for asthma patients as it reduces frequency of asthma attacks and minimizes use of medication. It was also observed that after salt therapy count of immune cells decreased in all 8 patients. The results of paired sample t-test gave a p-value of less than 0.05 in the case of all 5 immune cell counts, which shows salt therapy is an effective treatment for asthma patients. Vet lab study results show that body weight significantly increased from the start of treatment phase to the end of experiment in all treatment groups. However, lung weight analysis revealed remarkable decrease in diseased rats. CBC tests show a significant decrease in immune cells count of treatment rat groups with different aerosols concentrations. The histological results of different treatment groups were then compared with normal and diseased rats. It is observed that salt treatment proves to be significantly effective way for treating asthma through intranasal salt aerosols inhalation. This study shows that salt therapy can be used as a treatment for asthma.