Chest
Clinical InvestigationsSMOKINGSmoking and Airway Inflammation in Patients With Mild Asthma
Section snippets
Subjects
Thirty nonasthmatic and 67 asthmatic subjects were further classified according to their smoking habits. Asthmatic subjects had stable symptoms at the time of study, and no history within the preceding 2 months of respiratory infection, or antibiotic or oral corticosteroid use, and were treated only with inhaled bronchodilators as required. Asthma was defined according to the American Thoracic Society definition,13 baseline lung function was recorded and, in asthmatic subjects, nonspecific
Patients
There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of age or smoking history (Table 1). The mean (SD) resting prebronchodilator FEV1 percent predicted was lower in asthmatic smokers (83 [15]%), asthmatic nonsmokers (85 [16]%) and healthy smokers (91 [15]%) than the healthy nonsmokers (103.9 [14]%) [p < 0.05 in each case; Table 1]. All asthmatic patients had hyperreactive airways at screening, although one asthmatic smoker had a PC20 of 16 mg/mL at the study visit (geometric mean
Discussion
Studies examining airway inflammation in asthma have concentrated mainly on nonsmoking subjects, presumably to avoid the known effects of smoking confounding the pathogenic mechanisms under investigation, and there is therefore little direct information about the effect of smoking on asthmatic airway inflammation. We have demonstrated that cigarette smoking has an impact on asthmatic airway inflammation, with evidence of an increase in sputum WBC count, relative and absolute neutrophilia, and
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Cited by (0)
Dr. Chalmers was Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland Research Fellow, and Ms. Thomson and Dr. Little were funded by grants from the Scottish Home and Health Department, and the National Asthma Campaign, respectively.