Presenter - Yeah, well I hope that's some help to you anyway Phil now on the subject of drugs again. Avtar and Sandy have both experienced improvements in their asthma conditions when taking antibiotics for other problems, why would that be?

Martin - Yeah what and excellent question I've often wondered the answer to this one and I've got a feeling that in future we might find the answer to that because.

Presenter - That is true you've noticed that have you with other patients.

Martin - Definitely notice it. If you talk to any GP they will say that when they put their asthmatics on antibiotics often strangely they will get better even if you doubt that they actually have a chest infection. You know sometimes you will sort of if you've got an asthmatic child and you're not quite sure if they've got and infection or asthma you'll sort of hedge your bets and treat the asthma and add in an antibiotic. Or when asthma, was not so well recognised perhaps GPs sometimes were in the habit of thinking it was a chest infection when in fact in hindsight we think probably it was more asthma, but strangely it seems to have an effect. That's not to say that antibiotics are a good treatment for asthma, they're not.

Presenter - You can't be on them forever at the end of the day.

Martin - You can't be on them forever there are obviously downsides to having repeated courses of antibiotics .There are problems associated with antibiotics like thrush and all those sort of things plus there's that problem that we all know about bugs becoming resistant to antibiotics so that's not a good treatment, but strangely when we give antibiotics sometimes for other things you know somebody's asthma will get better. Don't know why I got a feeling in the future that we might find the answer to that.

Presenter - Might find it and of course treatments are improving all the time there's new drugs coming onto the market all the time

Martin - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter - And eventually you might just be able to take a pill and that will be that.

Martin - Yes hopefully. I mean there's lots of research being done onto asthma because it's such a common problem as you say 5 million people in the UK have it and unfortunately in certain cases can cause a certain number of deaths every year. So it's certainly a very important area.