The hypothesis that biased symptom perception toward excessive symptoms is common when relatively normal chronic patients enter symptom-relating situations, irrespective of emotional variables, was tested in 19 women with severe asthma, 18 with somatization-like characteristics, and 18 controls. Each underwent three experimental conditions: mental stress, resting, and physical exercise. Each co...

We assessed respiratory and cutaneous water loss in trained tippler pigeons (Columba livia) both at rest and in free flight. In resting pigeons, exhaled air temperature T(ex) increased with ambient air temperature T(a) (T(ex)=16.3+0.705T(a)) between 15 degrees C and 30 degrees C, while tidal volume V(T) (V(T)=4.7+/-1.0 ml, mean +/- S.D. at standard temperature and pressure dry) and breathing fr...

BACKGROUND Air pollution has been associated with respiratory health effects. There is little direct evidence that reductions in air pollution related to abatement policies lead to actual improvement in respiratory health. We assessed whether a reduction in (traffic policy-related) air pollution concentrations was associated with changes in respiratory health. METHODS Air pollution concentrat...

The lack of standardisation of breath sampling is a major contributing factor to the poor repeatability of results and hence represents a barrier to the adoption of breath tests in clinical practice. On-line and bag breath sampling have advantages but do not suit multicentre clinical studies whereas storage and robust transport are essential for the conduct of wide-scale studies. Several device...

BACKGROUND Carbon monoxide (CO) in expired air has been reported to be an indirect measurement for the quantity of passive smoking. Since endogen CO is produced in inflammatory processes and inflammation is the main pathogenetic mechanism of asthma, it was aimed to investigate the relationship between the intensity of passive smoking and CO concentration in expired air of healthy and asthmatic ...

STUDY OBJECTIVES The present study introduces a method that has been developed to improve the remote collection and transportation of gas samples from the nose and lungs. DESIGN Assessment of agreement between two methods of clinical measurements. SETTING Noninvasive exhaled gas measurement at a respiratory research laboratory. PARTICIPANTS Ten nonsmoking adult volunteers (median age, 44 ...

It has recently been demonstrated that 2-aminoacetophenone (2-AA) is a chemical indicator in exhaled air/breath of Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection associated with progressive life threatening decline of lung function in cystic fibrosis sufferers [Scott-Thomas et al., BMC Pulm. Med., 2010, 10, 56]. Currently the detection of 2-AA involves laboratory based instrumentation such as mass spectromet...

BACKGROUND The measurement of fractional concentration of nitric oxide in exhaled air (FeNO) is valuable for the assessment of airway inflammation. Offline measurement of FeNO has been used in some epidemiologic studies. However, the time course of the changes in FeNO after collection has not been fully clarified. In this study, the effects of storage conditions on the stability of FeNO measure...

We investigated whether an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor increases the production of nitric oxide (NO) in exhaled air in normotensive and hypertensive subjects. In study 1, 8 normotensive male subjects received a single oral dose of enalapril (5 mg) or nitrendipine (10 mg) in a crossover manner. Exhaled air was collected at baseline, and at 2, 4, and 8 hours after administration...

BACKGROUND Uraemic odour is a characteristic feature of patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). However, few investigations have been carried out into the composition of exhaled air in ESRD patients undergoing haemodialysis (HD). Increases of exhaled isoprene levels by a factor of up to 2.7 following HD have been reported. METHODS We attempted to confirm these findings in 50 patients un...