Breathe better with bitter

Inhaling a blast of bitter fumes sends a breathe-easy message to the lungs, a new study shows. Stimulating bitterness receptors in the lungs relaxes and opens the airways, a counterintuitive finding that could lead to new asthma medications, scientists report online October 24 in Nature Medicine.

Bitter-taste receptors just like the ones on the tongue abound on the smooth muscle tissue that wraps around the airway tubes leading to the lungs, reports a team from the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.