Background: Regular physical activity increases physical fi tness and lowers ventilation during mild and moderate exercise thereby reducing the likelihood of provoking exercise-induced asthma. Regular exercise may also reduce the perception of breathlessness through a number of mechanisms including strengthening respiratory muscles. Subjectively, many asthmatics report that they are symptomatic...

BACKGROUND We previously reported an increased prevalence of any congenital malformation among women experiencing moderate-to-severe asthma exacerbations during the first trimester of pregnancy, based on a study in which 90.1% of the cohort of women were social welfare recipients. This study re-examined the association between asthma exacerbations and congenital malformations in a new large rep...

Polyvinylchloride (PVC) resins are widely used in industry. Asthma due to the thermal degradation products of PVC are well documented. In this first case of occupational asthma due to unheated PVC resin dust the patient was exposed to PVC resin dust during the mixing of chemicals used for making plastic seals for bottle caps.

There is now clear evidence that asthma prevalence increased significantly, especially in developed countries, during the second part of the 20th century. What caused this increase is currently unknown. Recent reports from the United States and the United Kingdom suggest that asthma prevalence may have plateaued between 1995 and the first few years of the present century. This stabilization, an...

BACKGROUND Cobalt has been shown to induce mainly asthma, allergic contact dermatitis and hard metal disease. The data on cobalt asthma are mainly based on case reports. AIMS To characterize all the cases of occupational cobalt asthma encountered in a cobalt plant at the time of diagnosis and 6 months later. We also evaluated the incidence of cobalt asthma in different departments on the basi...

To investigate the role of signal transducer and transcriptional activator 5 (STAT5) activated in ovalbumin (OVA)-induced splenocyte proliferation of asthma mice, an asthma mouse model was set up by intraperitoneal injection and aspiration of OVA with nebulizer. The proliferation of splenocytes isolated from the asthma mice was detected by [3H] thymidine incorporation. The phosphorylation of ST...

Nedocromil sodium (Tilade) is a new anti-asthma drug that has selective mucosal mast cell stabilising properties.' In single dose human studies nedocromil has been shown to protect against exercise induced asthma,2 while in clinical studies, in which it has been administered four times a day for one month, improvements have been shown in the control of adult asthma.3 There are no published data...

Two types of occupational asthma have been identified and are distinguished by whether they appear after a latency period. Asthma without a latency period is best illustrated by irritant-induced asthma. The reactive airways dysfunction syndrome is a subset of irritant-induced asthma. Although case reports appeared in the literature before 1985, the term reactive airways dysfunction syndrome was...

Viral respiratory infections may be associated with the virus-induced asthma in adults as well as children. Particularly, human rhinovirus is strongly suggested a major candidate for the associations of the virus-induced asthma. Thus, in this review, we reviewed and focused on the epidemiology, pathophysiology, and treatment of virus-induced asthma with special reference on human rhinovirus. Fu...

Background: Use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may increase the risk of adult-onset asthma in women. Various in vitro studies have reported that estradiol stimulates human mast cell lines causing release of allergic mediators which was not observed in estrogen receptor-alpha (ER-alpha) knockout mice. Thus, estrogen might be a key element in occurrence of asthma. In the present study, we p...