Developers of a private hospital being built deep in a mountain cave are planning to target asthma sufferers with an unusual treatment.
Britain has the highest rate of asthma in the world, three times the European average, and at least 30% of British children are believed to be sufferers. Many experts blame the problem on house dust mites which are attracted by the fitted carpets present in most homes. Only about 10% of continental homes have fitted carpets.
The Pounds 10m hospital is being constructed from among 500km of linked chambers in a disused silver mine in the Austrian Tyrol town of Schwaz. It will market "speleotherapy", a treatment which some asthmatics believe has cured them.
The air found in deep caves is almost free of pollen, dust mites and the irritants which provoke an allergic reaction. It has high humidity and a warm temperature which helps to reduce the inflammation of the lining of the lungs.
Germany and eastern Europe all recognise speleotherapy, but is almost unknown in Britain.
Sylvia Beamon, 64, a Cambridge archeologist, had asthma for more than 30 years before she visited a Romanian salt mine sanatorium more than a mile underground for treatment. "It was tedious, but when I completed it my asthma had gone," she said.
Beamon has campaigned to interest other sufferers in speleotherapy. She persuaded the Cochrane Collaboration at Oxford University, a scientific group which reviews medical evidence for the effectiveness of treatment methods, to investigate the cave effect.
The committee concluded last year that there was not enough published scientific data to form an opinion and called for more research.
However, Dr Douglas Robinson, consultant allergist at St Mary's hospital, London, and senior lecturer in allergy at Imperial College, London, said: "There is good clinical data that if you can avoid allergens it can improve asthma."
Beamon has also visited Salt Union's working mine in Winsford, Cheshire, in the hopes of persuading it to promote the benefits of such treatment.
Kay Monaghan, technical manager of the mine, said although it was not open to the public a number of engineers and students who suffered from asthma had reported improvements in their condition.
Ludwig Ledermaier, director of the Austrian project, said it would accommodate up to 150 patients at a time. "Obviously we will be encouraging people to come from Britain because there is a particularly severe asthma problem there," he said.
Source: Lois Rogers and Tom Robbins. Sunday Times [London (UK)] 16 July 2000
