One important goal of asthma treatment is to reduce exacerbations. The current authors
investigated if the use of sputum cell counts to guide treatment would achieve this goal. A …

Background Treatment decisions in asthma are based on assessments of symptoms and
simple measures of lung function, which do not relate closely to underlying eosinophilic …

The inflammatory component of asthma is usually assessed indirectly by symptoms and
spirometry, these may be inaccurate. It can now be assessed directly and reliably by the …

BACKGROUND--Sputum analysis provides a non-invasive method of examining the airway
secretions of subjects with asthma in order to better understand the inflammatory process …

Background Induced sputum potentially allows monitoring of airway inflammation in patients
with asthma in a non‐invasive way. However, the relationship between the cellular content …

Background: The debate as to whether asthma is a single or heterogeneous disease
remains unresolved although pathological studies, mostly using fibreoptic bronchoscopy on …

Under Global Initiative for Asthma guidelines, the clinical control of disease activity and the
adjustment of treatment in patients with asthma are based on symptoms, use of rescue …

Background: The assessment of eosinophilic airway inflammation using induced sputum
identifies a corticosteroid-responsive subtype that can be used to guide anti-inflammatory …

BACKGROUND: Airway inflammation is considered to be important in asthma but is
relatively inaccessible to study. Less invasive methods of obtaining sputum from patients …

Airway inflammation is fundamental to the aetiology and persistence of asthma and other
airway conditions. The presence and type of airway inflammation can be difficult to detect …