Exhaled nitric oxide (NO) has been extensively investigated as a noninvasive marker of airway inflammation in asthma. The increased NO expression induced by inflammatory mediators in airways can be monitored easily in exhaled air from asthmatic children. Based on the relationship between the increased NO expression and eosinophilic airway inflammation, fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) mea...

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution, determinants and outcome of disease. In this article, the recently acquired knowledge of the epidemiology of occupational asthma is described, as well as current areas of controversy. Incidence figures obtained from field studies in high-risk workplaces, medicolegal statistics and sentinel programmes indicate that approximately 10% of adult-onset a...

A treadmill exercise test was carried out on 154 male subjects aged 15-25 years who gave a history of mild asthma in childhood, and on 31 similarly aged control subjects. The results were expressed as an exercise lability index, (ELI), based on measurement of FEV. The mean ELI of the control group was 7.6%, range 2.9-12.2% and a positive result in the asthma subjects was an ELI greater than 15%...

BACKGROUND Diesel exhaust exposure may cause acute irritant-induced asthma and potentiate allergen-induced asthma. There are no previous reports of occupational asthma due to diesel exhaust. AIMS To describe occupational asthma with latency in workers exposed to diesel exhaust in bus garages. METHODS The Shield database of occupational asthma notifications in the West Midlands, UK, was sear...

Many studies have been published in the last 10 years on the efficacy and safety of montelukast in asthma since this drug entered the market. Experimental studies, in vitro and in vivo, and clinical studies on large numbers of patients with asthma of different severity have clearly demonstrated that montelukast is able to modify the pathophysiological mechanisms of the disease, and to improve t...

Gandevia, B., and Milne, J. (1970). Brit. J. industr. Med., 27, 235-244. Occupational asthma and rhinitis due to Western red cedar (Thuja plicata), with special reference to bronchial reactivity. With the increasing use of Western, or Canadian, red cedar (Thuja plicata) in the timber industry, a distinctive respiratory syndrome of rhinitis and asthma has been observed with increasing frequency ...

Reduction of exposure to sensitising agents causing occupational asthma has been proposed as an alternative to total avoidance in order to minimise the adverse socio-economic impact of the condition. The aim of this systematic review was to compare the effects of these two management options on asthma and socio-economic outcomes. A bibliographic search was conducted to identify studies examinin...

Since the calcium antagonists nifedipine and verapamil have been shown to diminish exercise induced asthma, the effect of oral diltiazem, a calcium channel blocker not previously investigated in this context, was studied. Ten patients with bronchial asthma were given 60 mg diltiazem or placebo four hours before the challenge in a double blind, randomised, crossover fashion. Exercise was perform...

We created Asthma e-Lab, a secure web-based research environment to support consistent recording, description and sharing of data, computational/statistical methods and emerging findings across the five UK birth cohorts. The e-Lab serves as a data repository for our unified dataset and provides the computational resources and a scientific social network to support collaborative research. All ac...

Serum potassium concentrations were measured before, during, and after exercise in 32 patients with asthma (12 with exercise induced asthma), and in seven normal subjects. The changes in serum potassium in response to exercise did not differ significantly in the two groups or between those with and without exercise induced asthma. The potassium response to exercise is unlikely to be relevant to...