Highlights from this issue
- Andrew Bush,
- Ian Pavord, Editors
- Asthma guidelines
- cystic fibrosis
- exhaled airway markers
- lung physiology
- paediatric asthma
- paediatric lung disaese
- COPD mechanisms
- asthma
- asthma mechanisms
- COPD exacerbations
- cough/mechanisms/pharmacology
T (or Asthma) for two?
This issue of Thorax contains a bumper crop of asthma papers. Pregnancy has long been known to be a Th2 phenomenon (and you thought it had something to do with sex!). Forbes et al (see page 209) in the editors' choice paper show that pregnant women have deficient peripheral blood mononuclear cell interferon type I and III responses to rhinovirus infection whether they have asthma or not. The deficiency persists for at least 6 months after pregnancy. This immunological abnormality may explain the well recognised, but by no means universal, phenomenon of worsening asthma during and after pregnancy. No abnormality was identified in non-pregnant women with asthma although a local airway epithelium deficiency of interferon response has been noted by others. In a linked editorial, Busse and Gern (see page 189) speculate …
