Cigarette smoking habits among primary school children in Turkey.

sputum were stained with hematoxylin-eosin and with a mono¬ clonal antibody against eosinophil cationic protein (anti-EG2; Pharmacia; Uppsala, Sweden) for immunohistochemical evalua¬ tion. Stained mucosal cells were counted according to the method of Moqbel et al,3 and such cells in the sputum were also counted and expressed as a percentage of 500 cells. As shown in Table 1, IPD caused a significant improvement in the PC20-histamine value, a significant reduction in the percent¬ age of eosinophils in induced sputum, and a significant reduction in the number of eosinophils and EG2-positive cells in the bronchial mucosal tissues. Hematoxylin-eosin-stained bronchial mucosal tissues showed a clear reduction in mucosal eosinophil infiltration after IPD administration. An ongoing airway mucosal inflammatory process has been demonstrated in patients with mild or asymptomatic asthma, characterized by eosinophilic and lymphocytic infiltrates, second¬ ary epithelial injury, and subepithelial fibrosis.4 The considerable eosinophil infiltration in the airway of patients with mild asthma observed in the recent study suggests the necessity of inhibiting eosinophil infiltration even in patients with mild asthma. In summary, asthmatic patients treated with IPD showed parallel changes in inhibition of eosinophil infiltration and improvement in bronchial hyperresponsiveness, suggesting that IPD may be as useful to treat mild bronchial asthma as inhaled corticosteroids. References 1 Barnes PJ. Drug therapy: inhaled glucocorticoids for asthma.