Exhaled nitric oxide and COPD

To the Editors:

We were interested to read the paper by Lehtimäki et al. 1 recently published in the European Respiratory Journal, in which those authors reported that “high pre-treatment levels of J′_aw,NO [bronchial nitric oxide flux] are related to symptom relief and improvement of airway obstruction” when inhaled fluticasone is given to patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Their data complement those which we ourselves have recently published …