A study led by Dr. Maria Jesús Cruz, head of the http://bit.ly/2rDtfKS Pneumology Research Group at the Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) and by Drs. Xavier Muñoz, Susana Gómez and Daniel álvarez, from the same group, have shown that a certain amount of soy that alone does not cause allergies, when administered in combination with diesel particles, makes experimental animals develop asthma. In addition, they have also discovered that the mechanism that triggers asthma is different if it is caused by pure allergy to soybeans or if it is due to the sum of soy and pollution. The study has been published in http://bit.ly/2vItgQY PLOS ONE magazine.Taking advantage of the fact that for almost 30 years the VHIR laboratory daily measures the concentration of soya in the atmosphere in the city of Barcelona, they decided to make a model for soybeans asthma to study the interaction of environmental pollution with soy and the pathophysiology of this disease.Thus, they found that "for an experimental animal to develop asthma it was necessary to inhale 5 mg/ml of soy. Lower doses of 3 mg/ml did not cause any effect, like diesel particles on their own," explains Dr. María Jesús Cruz.However, when experimentation animals inhaled 3mg/ml of soy combined with diesel particles, they did become asthmatic. "Therefore, it would be the combination of these two elements that alone do not cause asthma, the responsible of eventually causing experimental animals to develop the disease," he adds.On the other hand, they saw that in eosinophils, cells that are in the lungs of asthmatic people, this pattern is also reproduced. That is, in the case of experimentation animals that inhale 5 mg/ml of soy, eosinophils are very high, just like when they inhale 3mg/ml of soy and diesel particles. Instead, the levels do not increase if they only inhale 3 mg/ml of soy.Physiopathological mechanismsDuring the investigation, it was also studied the possible mechanism behind these reactions. Through a biomarker study, they found that when experimental animals are only allergic to soy, there is only one type of lymphocyte involved, while in mice that had inhaled soy and diesel particles there were more than one types of lymphocytes.Soy in the environmentCurrently, in the city of Barcelona, there are some limits on soy emissions. These occur when the boats download soy into the port. In recent years, the measures taken to reduce the emissions of this allergen as well as the continuous monitoring of environmental concentration have contributed to controlling the epidemics of soybean asthma in the city.