eLetters

340 e-Letters

  • Predicting in-hospital death related to pulmonary embolism
    Andrew RL Medford

    Dear Editor,

    Ghuysen et al in their recent retrospective study demonstrated the potential value of CTPA RV/LV ratio in predicting in-hospital mortality related to pulmonary embolism.[1] I wondered if they assessed ECG evidence of acute right heart strain and/or serum cardiac biomarkers of injury in the same study and what the relative prognostic value of these indices versus the CTPA RV/LV ratio was, assuming th...

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  • Resveratrol/COPD
    Andreas C-G v.Glehn

    Dear Editor

    Regarding the article by Culpitt et al.[1] I wish to comment on the use of Resveratrol and the claims made with regard to COPD. I would interested in learning what evidence the authors have for the claims made. I have, after reading the report and as a patient, tested Resveratrol for 9 weeks without absolutely any result! There were no indications of influence on the immune system or inflammato...

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  • Bronchiectasis and nontuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary infection
    Won-Jung Koh

    Dear Editor,

    We read with great interest the paper by Wickremasinghe et al. on the prevalence of nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) in patients with bronchiectasis.[1] They showed that the prevalence of NTM was uncommon (only 2%) both in 50 newly referred patients and 50 follow up patients. However, the authors stated in the Discussion that it is now our practice to screen our patients routinely once a year bec...

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  • Resveratrol, COPD and Clinical Evaluation
    Louise E Donnelly

    Dear Editor

    We thank Andreas von Glehn for his interest in our paper, sufficient that he took resveratrol capsules for his own condition, presumably COPD.[1]

    His short course of treatment (9 weeks) highlights the difficulties in evaluating therapies for the treatment of COPD. COPD is a slowly progressive inflammatory condition of the lungs and, as such, clinical trials using lung function measurements a...

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  • Consideration of Palivizumab not justified
    Rollo D Clifford

    Dear Editor,

    Broughton and colleagues state that consideration should be given to use of prophylactic palivizumab to infants born at less than 32 weeks in the case of maternal smoking or even if they have siblings. The authors however present no data from their own or other studies to indicate that this would be in any way cost effective or justified. Certainly the word "consider" is fortunate given the stated fu...

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  • Analysis of mesothelioma pathogenesis
    Alfonso Baldi

    Dear Editor

    Malignant mesothelioma (MM) is a rare, highly aggressive tumor, accounting for less than 1% of all cancer deaths in the world. Although the association between exposure to asbestos and the development of MM is commonly accepted, the exact mechanism whereby asbestos induces MM is unknown. Therefore, we agree with Dr Lange observation that the search for other agents/factors causing this disease should...

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  • Authors' reply to Koh and Kwon
    Robert Wilson

    Dear Editor,

    We would agree with much of the content of the interesting letter from Doctors Koh and Kwon, particularly the details of M.avium complex infection and the use of CT scans in making the diagnosis.[1] We have also had experience of bronchoscopy and biopsy being necessary to make the diagnosis in some cases with suggestive radiology. The one point on which we disagree is the value of routine annual scr...

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  • What about other polymorphisms in Transforming growth factor- beta1?
    Ahmed E Hegab

    Dear Editor

    We read with interest the recent article by Wu et al. [1] in which they investigated a single nucleotide polymorphism at exon 1 of the transforming growth factor beta1 (TGF-beta1) gene.

    While we agree with their assumption that TGF-beta1 is a candidate gene for COPD association study, we can not understand why they restricted their study to only one polymorphism in that gene. There a...

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  • RSV infection in prematurely born infants
    Sanjeev Deshpande

    Dear Editor,

    I read with interest the article by Broughton et al, and wish to offer following comments.

    1. The duration of oxygen therapy (in both Table 1 and the text) ranges from 30 to 107 weeks, thus qualifying every baby in the cohort as having BPD. Even if this was in days, it would make every baby oxygen dependent 28 days after birth, c...

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  • Disease duration: fundamental to the study of airway wall remodelling
    Christopher E Brightling

    Dear Editor,

    We read with interest the study by Park et al(1). We agree that non- asthmatic eosinophilic bronchitis (EB), a condition characterised by eosinophilic inflammation without evidence of variable airflow obstruction is a powerful disease control group to study the mechanisms involved in the development of airway hyperresponsiveness in asthma. Previous comparative studies have demonstrated that asthma and...

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