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“About 10 per cent of people suffer from asthma, and 30 to 40 per cent have some sort of rhinitis and we need to be able to predict it.”
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Osborne’s team has also been researching why Melbourne is comparatively more likely to produce thunderstorm asthma, when cities such as Sydney have more storms. “It is the combination of dry, windy days over a population centre where the population has allergies,” he said.
“The Australian population seems to be one of the most allergic populations around the world.”
Melbourne University environmental epidemiologist Dr Rachel Tham is part of a research team examining a potential link between being prone to pollen-induced hay fever and experiencing thunderstorm asthma, given far more people affected by Melbourne’s worst outbreak had previously had hay fever than regular asthma.
“We’re aiming to recruit people across Melbourne who have hay fever and want to identify among those people if they have a certain biomarker which identifies them as being at risk of asthma when grass pollen levels change,” said Tham.
“If we can predict those people, we can get them onto asthma prevention at the start of the season rather than waiting for them to have an attack.”
Melbourne researchers are studying a possible link between hay fever and thunderstorm asthma as the city’s pollen season, fuelled by grass and tree pollen, has been found to be extending.Credit: Louis Enrique Ascui
Dr Jonathan Pham, consultant allergist at The Alfred hospital and researcher at Monash University School of Translational Medicine, said the influence of climate change on pollen allergy was concerning because Australians were already vulnerable to adverse pollen effects.
“Allergy to pollen has led to increased emergency department visits for asthma and, in severe cases, fatalities,” he said.
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“This was tragically demonstrated during the 2016 Melbourne thunderstorm asthma epidemic, which was triggered by extreme grass pollen levels and resulted in 3365 emergency presentations and 10 deaths.”
He said chronic – persistent or ongoing – impacts were equally profound. “Pollen allergies and asthma can hinder childhood development, causing lifelong morbidity from reduced participation in school, sports and social activities.”
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