A Disease Often Misdiagnosed as Asthma

[Guest guest]

I read another article on alpha 1 today. People with alpha 1 have symptoms like asthma and the article said 1 out of every 11 Americans have it. The article was in a fibromyalgia magazine and I cant find it online. So here is some information about alpha 1.

Emphysema is a lung disease that affects the walls of the alveoli, the small sacs in the lungs that exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide.

Emphysema causes the alveolar walls to lose their elasticity. This causes small pockets of dead air to remain in the lungs and makes it difficult to exhale air from the lungs. Most emphysema cases are caused by smoking, but about 3 percent of cases are caused by an inherited deficiency in a protein that normally protects the alveoli. This protein is alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT). In emphysema caused by AAT deficiency, the small airways that lead to the alveoli are also damaged.

Full article