Twenty children were studied during severe attacks of acute asthma to find out how dehydrated they were on admission to hospital. Mean body weight on admission was 97.8% of their reference stable weight seven to 10 days after the attack and in only three children was it less than 95% of the stable weight. Bedside assessment of dehydration was unreliable. The mean packed cell volume was signific...

Myopathy of insidious onset produced by corticosteroids is well recognised. In recent years acute myopathy has been reported in patients with acute severe asthma treated with 3-4 g of intravenous hydrocortisone a day.1 2 It has been argued that to minimise the risks of this the dose should be no more than 1 g of hydrocortisone a day.2 There is evidence that 1 g/day is an effective regimen.3 We ...

BACKGROUND Acute severe asthma can be distressing for patients. It is important to be able to identify the causes of the distress so that these can receive attention in conjunction with the conventional treatment of the airways. STUDY OBJECTIVE To modify the Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AQLQ) for evaluating patients with acute severe asthma and to test the measurement properties of t...

Hypercapnia in a patient with acute asthma is an ominous prognostic sign. In the past, it was taught that eucapnia in patients with acute severe asthma merited readiness for endotracheal intubation because the eucapnia might indicate a patient in transition from hypocapnia to hypercapnia. Although intubation and mechanical ventilation can be lifesaving in patients with acute severe asthma, thes...

magnesium (mg) is the second most abundant intracellular cation and is involved in numerous physiological functions, including protein folding, intracellular signaling and enzyme catalysis. it has been shown that magnesium deficiency exacerbates pulmonary airways hyperreactivity. several studies suggest that magnesium level has no effect on asthma but others had shown a contributory effect. bec...

We report the case of a severe bronchial asthma attack 15 minutes after the ingestion of food containing small amounts of alcohol. Although an ethanol inhalation test was negative, an acetaldehyde inhalation test was positive. Furthermore, it was discovered that the patient was homozygous for a mutation of the aldehyde dehydrogenase-2 (ALDH-2) gene. We subsequently diagnosed his attack as acute...

BACKGROUND Cough is a major symptom in some children with asthma. The relationship between cough and the severity of asthma is ill defined. A study was undertaken to test the hypotheses that, in children with asthma who cough as a major part of their asthma symptoms, cough receptor sensitivity (CRS) is heightened during an acute severe exacerbation of asthma but not in the non-acute phase and a...

Allergic asthma is the most common acute inflammatory airway disorder and their incidence population has exploded in the last years, being estimated that over 300 million people worldwide have the condition. Here, we present a brief overview of relationship of allergic asthma with diet and food intake. Several studies have shown that most asthma cases are due to an allergic immune response to e...

Introduction: Asthma is the most common chronic airway disease in children, which is caused by genetic and environmental factors such as obesity. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between obesity and asthma severity in children. Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study included 200 asthmatic children aged 6 to 12 years in Yazd Shohadaye Kargar hospital in 2015 - 201...