F.D.A backing Respiratory Distress Drug for Babies

In class this week we have been learning about the respiratory system and the different conditions that can happen in the respiratory system as we age. I find this topic to be interesting because my mother suffers from severe asthma, and other people in my family have suffered from respiratory diseases from asthma to COPD, so I have seen the effects that respiratory conditions can have when we age. I thought that this article was interesting because as a premature baby myself I have always wondered what kinds of drugs they were using and what kind of problems were being found with these medications. I found this article about the F.D.A approving this respiratory distress drug for babies to be interesting as well because it discusses how the drug surfaxin would be used to prevent respiratory distress disorder that could turn out to be potentially fatal in infants and premature babies. What this drug will do is coat the air sacs in the lungs to keep them open. Surfaxin will create the surfactant which many premature babies usually do not make themselves, which makes it difficult to breathe. The lab Discovery that has been working on this drug surfaxin has estimated that there are about 90 million premature babies who are treated with a surfactant every year in the United States. Even though this was not about the aging population but about babies I felt this was relevant because it spoke about the respiratory system and how distress to the system could be harmful and life threatening.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/health/policy/fda-backs-surfaxin-respiratory-distress-drug-for-babies.html