TY - JOUR T1 - A pilot study to test the feasibility of histological characterisation of asthma-COPD overlap JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J DO - 10.1183/13993003.01941-2018 SP - 1801941 AU - E. Papakonstantinou AU - S. Savic AU - A. Siebeneichler AU - W. Strobel AU - P. W. Jones AU - M. Tamm AU - D. Stolz Y1 - 2019/01/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/early/2019/02/20/13993003.01941-2018.abstract N2 - Asthma and COPD are chronic respiratory diseases that share some common characteristics. Asthma is associated with airway hyperresponsiveness, airway inflammation and airflow limitation that is reversible [1]. COPD is characterised by persistent and progressive airflow limitation and airway inflammation [2]. During the past years, there is a long discussion whether asthma and COPD are different diseases since a significant proportion of patients with symptoms of obstructive lung diseases has features of both asthma and COPD [3–5]. In this respect, the most clinically significant phenotypes are COPD patients with asthmatic features and asthmatic patients that smoke.FootnotesThis manuscript has recently been accepted for publication in the European Respiratory Journal. It is published here in its accepted form prior to copyediting and typesetting by our production team. After these production processes are complete and the authors have approved the resulting proofs, the article will move to the latest issue of the ERJ online. Please open or download the PDF to view this article.Conflict of interest: Dr. Papakonstantinou has nothing to disclose.Conflict of interest: Dr. Savic has nothing to disclose.Conflict of interest: Dr. Siebeneichler has nothing to disclose.Conflict of interest: Dr. Strobel has nothing to disclose.Conflict of interest: Prof. Jones reports that he is an employee of GlaxoSmithKline.Conflict of interest: Dr. Tamm has nothing to disclose.Conflict of interest: Dr. Stolz has nothing to disclose. ER -