Asthma Case Study: Symptoms, Medication and Mechanism of Action

This case study explores the symptoms, medication and mechanism of action for a 45-year-old female patient with asthma. Salbutamol is used to treat the bronchial smooth muscle contraction observed in this case study.

Running head: ASTHMA
Asthma
Name of the student:
Name of the university
Author note:

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Person/client’ criteria
What is their name? Julia White
What is their gender? Female
What is their age? 45 years
What condition do they have? Asthma
Are they a within a healthy weight range? Yes
Do they exercise? Not much
What is their occupation? Homemaker
What is their living status? Lives with her family with husband and children
What is their family medical history? allergy
Are they pregnant? No
Are they a smoker? no
What is their alcohol intake? Nil
What medications have they been prescribed? Salbutamol
Question1:
The case study represents the asthma condition of 45 years, female patient Julia White
who was a home maker and had a medical history of allergy (Neame et al., 2015). Bronchial
smooth muscle was observed in this case study due to the asthma. Bronchial contraction is a type
of contraction of airway in the lungs due to the tightening of the bronchial smooth muscle
construction observed in this case study (Patel et al., 2013). Since she had history of allergy, due
to the allergen the IgE mediated reaction takes place. The allergens enter through the nostril, it
induces the IgE mediated allergic reaction and mast cell present in the bronchial become dilated
and secreted the histamine as vasodilator (Neame et al., 2015). Consequently, as the bronchial

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narrow, it blocks the airway and making it harder to breathe (Coulson, 2014). The mucous
production also takes place due to excessive due to vasodilatation caused by allergy. Therefore,
the patient developed symptoms such as wheezing, tightness and coughing. In order to reduce the
occurrence of the asthma, salbutamol can be used as observed in this case study.
Question 2:
As observed in this case study, 45 years of female patient Julia White was suffering from
asthma and breathing problem. She was exhibiting the symptoms of the symptoms such as
wheezing which is an indicator of dysphonic. Wheezing is a high pitched whistling sound which
mostly exhibited by patient whole breathing (Maryn & Weenink, 2015). Wheezing observed
when the airway of lungs blocked and narrow making it difficult to breathing. Since the patient
had the history of allergy, allergen induces the blockage of airway and secretion of mucous
which in turn causes spasms in lungs (Ferreira et al., 2014). The inflammation in the throat and
lungs sometimes give rise to the wheezing, especially when asthma arises from the allergen.
Consequently, the patient may exhibit the Dysphonic (Honkoop et al., 2015). Dysphonia mainly
observed due to side effect of the asthma medication (Neame et al., 2015). The patient may
experience difficulty in speaking, muscle weakness and loss of voice.
Question 3
Salbutamol is generally used in patients with respiratory disorder as it is able to relax the
smooth muscles of the lungs and it helps to open the airways of the lungs in order to improve the
breathing (Neame et al., 2015). Most of the time this drug is used to treat the disorders such as
asthma, along with chronic bronchitis, and emphysema. Here the patient is suffering from
asthma therefore salbutamol is the drug of choice. In terms of the mechanism of action of the
drug, it has been seen that since the drug is an aerosol, therefore it acts at β2-adrenoreceptors on

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the smooth muscle which envelops the bronchi (Neame et al., 2015). This is turn binds to the
epinephrine’s active site in a non-covalent manner that is present in the receptor site and this in
turn stabilizes the receptor that is present in the active state. The receptor in turn is involved in
spending more time for the stabilized active state and therefore makes more cAMP. This cAMP
in turn is involved in triggering the intracellular cascades that ends up in the release of K+ along
with decrease in free intracellular Ca2+. This therefore does not allow the muscles’ ability to
contract further (Coulson, 2014).
Question 4
A)
This drug is applied topically in order since it can modulate wound repair processes. In
cases where the drug is applied on a wound, it changes the way by which the wound is
healed. It also curbs the excessive behaviour of the cell and thus it moves the healing process
far away from scarring and pushes it towards the normal skin regeneration (Wang et
al.,2013).
B)
Before administration of this drug, salbutamol it is required to provide some educational
advice is given to the patients who are administered with the drug. The interaction of this drug
with alcohol is not known therefore it is prescribed that before consumption of alcohol the doctor
should be advised. This medicine is not recommended for use in pregnant women unless
necessary. This medicine is also not given to patients for use while breastfeeding (Patel et al.,
2013).

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references :
Coulson, C. J. (2014). Molecular mechanisms of drug action. CRC Press.
Ferreira, M. A., Matheson, M. C., Tang, C. S., Granell, R., Ang, W., Hui, J., ... & Bui, M.
(2014). Genome-wide association analysis identifies 11 risk variants associated with the
asthma with hay fever phenotype. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 133(6),
1564-1571.
Honkoop, P. J., Loijmans, R. J., Termeer, E. H., Snoeck-Stroband, J. B., van den Hout, W. B.,
Bakker, M. J., ... & Sont, J. K. (2015). Symptom-and fraction of exhaled nitric oxide–
driven strategies for asthma control: a cluster-randomized trial in primary care. Journal of
Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 135(3), 682-688.
Maryn, Y., & Weenink, D. (2015). Objective dysphonia measures in the program Praat:
smoothed cepstral peak prominence and acoustic voice quality index. Journal of
Voice, 29(1), 35-43.
Neame, M., Aragon, O., Fernandes, R. M., & Sinha, I. (2015). Salbutamol or aminophylline for
acute severe asthma: how to choose which one, when and why?. Archives of Disease in
Childhood-Education and Practice, 100(4), 215-222.
Patel, M., Pilcher, J., Reddel, H. K., Pritchard, A., Corin, A., Helm, C., ...& Beasley, R. (2013).
Metrics of salbutamol use as predictors of future adverse outcomes in asthma. Clinical &
Experimental Allergy, 43(10), 1144-1151.

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Wang, H., Zhang, Y., Li, H., Du, B., Ma, H., Wu, D., & Wei, Q. (2013). A silver–palladium
alloy nanoparticle-based electrochemical biosensor for simultaneous detection of
ractopamine, clenbuterol and salbutamol. Biosensors and Bioelectronics, 49, 14-19.