In Yokkaichi-city, where power stations, oil refining and related chemical plants exist, growing number of cases of asthmatic patients has been reported since these plants were put in operation in 1955. At Isozu, where air pollution is most severe, incidence of asthma reached up to 2.5% of total population in 1964. In whole Yokkaichi-city, annual average of sulphur dioxide level by lead peroxid...

The knowledge and attitude towards asthma, of parents, of 85 asthmatic children was assessed using a 17 item questionnaire. Results showed that 34.1% believed asthma to be contagious, 48.2% of the parents hesitated in referring to their child's illness as asthma. Other commonly held beliefs were that asthma is a life long illness (35.3%); food items are important precipitating factors for acute...

BACKGROUND It is hypothesised that, despite recent initiatives to improve asthma self-management including asthma education, detailed investigation of the sequence of events culminating in hospital admission will lead to the identification of important management errors and thus the likelihood that the majority of severe asthma attacks are preventable by currently available strategies, and that...

OBJECTIVE To examine the role of higher long-term poverty rates in the Maritimes as an explanation for higher rates of asthma among children 2-7 years of age. METHODS Using longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), logistic regressions examine associations between poverty duration and the probability of a child having been diagnosed with asthma, ha...

BACKGROUND Acrolein is an air toxic and highly potent respiratory irritant. There is little epidemiology available, but US EPA estimates that outdoor acrolein is responsible for about 75 percent of non-cancer respiratory health effects attributable to air toxics in the United States, based on the Agency's 2005 NATA (National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment) and acrolein's comparatively potent inhal...

Background: Cysteinyl leukotrienes (CysLTs) and thromboxane (TX) A 2 have been implicated in the pathogenesis of bronchial asthma. Urinary leukotriene E 4 (LTE 4 ) and 11-dehydro-TXB 2 (11DTXB 2 ) levels are often used to assess the production of CysLTs and TXA 2 . However, few studies have examined the products of these two mediators in the same asthmatic patients. To define the potential role...

BACKGROUND A life-threatening asthma attack is still of major concern. One of the main goals in treating patients with asthma is identification of the patients at risk of having these attacks. It has been shown that patients who have a near-fatal asthma attack have a blunted perception of dyspnea (POD). The purpose of this study is to measure the POD in patients with asthma, and to relate POD t...

Background Asthma is the most common chronic airway disease in children. We aimed to investigate the effect of vitamin C supplementation on improving the asthma symptoms in children. Materials and Methods: In a double-blind clinical trial: sixty 2-12-year-old children hospitalized with the diagnosis of asthma attack in the Ghaem an...

This article describes the management of acute asthma exacerbation in the Emergency Department (ED). An asthma exacerbation can be defined as clinical worsening of disease or an asymptomatic decrease in peak flows. Acute exacerbations of asthma may represent reactions to airway irritants or failures of chronic treatment. Hospitalizations and ED visits account for a large proportion of the healt...

Asthma is a clinical syndrome that typically consists of increased airway hyperresponsiveness and recurrent episodes of airway obstruction and inflammation with subsequent remodeling. As one of the most common conditions seen in the primary care setting, asthma is of great interest to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC recently revealed that the prevalence of asthm...