The attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) created an acute environmental disaster of enormous magnitude. This study characterizes the environmental exposures resulting from destruction of the WTC and assesses their effects on health. Methods include ambient air sampling; analyses of outdoor and indoor settled dust; high-altitude imaging and modeling of the atmospheric plume; inhalation studies...

Current asthma is often diagnostically excluded by the presence of normal bronchial responsiveness. We report on a TDI-induced occupational asthma patient with normal bronchial responsiveness. He had suffered from shortness of breath during and after TDI exposure for several months. His initial methacholine bronchial challenge test showed a negative response. The bronchoprovacation test with TD...

Within a year we have observed 19 patients (16 females) who presented to the Ear-Nose-Throat (ENT) department of our hospital for an isolated cough present from one month to 14 years duration. Their ENT medical examination was normal, except for one subject who complained of chronic rhinitis. They were normotensive and did not use an angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor. In all of them bronc...

It has been suggested that, in epidemiological studies, asthma should be defined as symptomatic bronchial hyperresponsiveness (BHR). This paper critically examines the validity of this and alternative methods of defining asthma by reviewing population-based studies validating BHR and symptom questionnaires against asthma defined on the basis of a clinical assessment. It is emphasized that a sin...

We have read the recent paper by BAcKER and coworkers [1] in which they confirm findings of previous surveys that there is a considerable overlap in bronchial responsiveness between asthmatics and non-asthmatics. Most of these surveys have used a fixed threshold level as a positive test criterion, for instance PC 20 FEV 1 $8 g·l methacholine. However, several studies [2, 3] show that bronchial ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the safety of the tracheal auscultation method for measuring bronchial hyperresponsiveness in healthy unsedated children aged less than 4 years and to establish a range of normal bronchial hyperresponsiveness values. POPULATION AND METHODS The study population consisted of healthy children aged between 6 months and 4 years. A methacholine bronchial provocation test was adm...

There is ongoing debate as to how asthma should be defined in order to forward understanding of the underlying mechanisms. The aim of the present study was to build quantitative scores of asthma and asthma severity and to assess whether refinement of disease phenotypes can facilitate the identification of chromosomal regions harbouring susceptibility genes. A genome-wide linkage scan was conduc...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of obesity and asthma has increased concurrently over the last decades, suggesting a link between obesity and asthma. However, asthma might not be adequately diagnosed in this population. AIM To investigate whether not only overdiagnosis but also underdiagnosis of asthma is present in an obese population. METHODS Morbidly obese subjects with or without physician-di...