Salt Chambers Helpful for Asthma Patients

A new study finds that breathing salt dust for 40 minutes a day can reduce bronchial hyper-responsiveness in patients with asthma.

Researchers from South Karelia Central Hospital (Lappeenranta, Finland) evaluated the effects of salt-chamber treatment in 32 patients with persistent asthma who exhibited bronchial hyper-responsiveness to histamine challenge, despite inhaled steroid treatment. The patients were randomly assigned to two weeks of treatment in a constructed halo chamber,” designed to simulate the microclimate of salt mines. Patients received daily 40-minute sessions for five days a week, with a salt generator either blowing salt dust into the chamber or running without salt being fed in.

After two weeks, the median provocative dose of histamine caused a 15% drop in forced expiratory volume (FEV1) in one second, a significant increase in the active treatment group, whereas patients who spent time in the chamber with minimal salt concentrations experienced declines in FEV1. Bronchial hyper-responsiveness decreased by at least one doubling dose in nine patients (56%) in the active group compared with only two patients (17%) in the placebo group. Six patients in the active group (38%) no longer responded to histamine after treatment compared with none of the patients in the placebo group. By two months after completion of the salt chamber treatment, four of 13 patients in the active group and one of nine patients in the placebo group were unresponsive to histamine challenge. The results were reported in the May 2006 issue of Allergy.

Natural salt caves and salt mines have been used for years as complementary medicine for treating asthmatic patients in various parts of Europe and Asia.