People with asthma can reduce the severity of their symptoms with regular exercise, experts have told a major European conference.
There are about 300 million asthma sufferers around the world.
Professor Stefano Del Giacco of the University of Cagliari, Italy, says that rather than making asthma worse, moderate exercise is helpful.
He tested a team of professional footballers who trained regularly, and found they had a lower than average allergic response. This means their regular exercise reduced their risk, he said at the recent congress of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in Istanbul, Turkey.
Exercise benefits certain immune molecules that can trigger inflammation. It also reduces the chance of being overweight, which can also help avoid asthma attacks.
Running and cycling are recommended. Professor Del Giacco said: "Regular, moderate exercise can improve your asthma and also your immune system – this is nowadays very well proven.
"The general message is that mild exercise should be recommended to asthmatics as part of their symptom management program."
Also at the congress, Professor Sergio Bonini of the Institute of Neurobiology and Molecular Medicine in Rome, Italy, announced his study on athletes with asthma.
He found that 15 per cent of athletes at the Beijing Olympics had asthma – much higher than the rate of five per cent in the general population.
Professor Bonini said: "Strenuous and prolonged exercise and training increase the types of cells that cause allergy and asthma." It also causes rapid breathing and sometimes dehydration, which can trigger symptoms.
He stated that athletes who have been suspected of abusing anti-asthma drugs to enhance performance are probably genuine sufferers.
Results presented at the 30th congress of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI), held in Istanbul, Turkey, from June 11-15, 2011.
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