BACKGROUND Severe asthma is a heterogeneous disease and the relationship between airway inflammation and airway remodelling is poorly understood. We sought to define sputum mediator profiles in severe asthmatics categorised by CT-determined airway geometry and sputum differential cell counts. METHODS In a single centre cross-sectional observational study we recruited 59 subjects with severe a...

BACKGROUND Although sputum induction is used as a technique to investigate lower airway inflammation in asthmatic subjects, advantages over spontaneous sputum in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have not been investigated. METHODS Samples of spontaneous sputum and sputum induced with 3% hypertonic saline for 14 minutes were collected from 27 patients with chronic obs...

Improved tuberculosis (TB) diagnostics are required. Induced sputum sampling is superior to spontaneous sputum analysis for diagnosis of pulmonary TB. Therefore, we examined the applicability of induced sputum in primary health centers of the Peruvian TB program and studied the safety and tolerability of this procedure. We show that induced sputum is safe, inexpensive, and well-tolerated in a r...

Levels of ciprofloxacin in serum and sputum were studied for eight patients with cystic fibrosis who were infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Patients were studied in a steady state on a dosage of 500 mg every 8 h. Peak levels in serum ranged from 1.27 to 5.6 mg/liter (mean, 3.16 +/- 1.27), and absorption was rapid, the time to peak concentration ranging from 0.5 to 3.0 h (mean, 1.5 +/- 0.9)....

background: routinely collected data from tuberculosis surveillance system can be used to investigate and monitor the irregularities and abrupt changes of the disease incidence. we aimed at using a hidden markov model in order to detect the abnormal states of pulmonary tuberculosis in iran. methods: data for this study were the weekly number of newly diagnosed cases with sputum smear-positive p...

BACKGROUND Sputum smear microscopy is the standard diagnostic method for detection of smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). Insufficient quality of sputum might result in missing cases. In this study we aimed at assessing the quality of sputum in a district in Central Java and determining patient and health worker factors associated with submission of three good quality sputum samples. ...

BACKGROUND Prior microrheologic assessments of selected, microlitre plugs of cystic fibrosis (CF) sputum suggest no intrinsic rheologic abnormality. However, such analyses may not be representative of CF sputum as a whole. We therefore reassessed this question using whole sputum macrorheology. Additionally, we wished to further explore the relationships between sputum rheology, inflammation and...

1. The average specific polysaccharide content of rusty or bloody sputa in Type III was 91 times greater than the average for Types I, II, VII, and VIII pneumonia. 2. Those Type III sputums which were classified as reticulated contained an average S concentration of 1,360 mg. per cent or 170 times more than the amount found in other types. 3. Those Type III sputa which were classified as non-re...