No abstract

Bronchial asthma ranks among the most common allergic diseases in children. It is chronic inflammatory disease of the respiratory tract, in which many cells of innate and adaptive immune system participate together with epithelial cells causing the main clinical syndromes typical for the disease. Currently, bronchial asthma therapy aims at obtaining the control over the symptoms and course of asthma by providing an anti-inflammatory baseline therapy using different groups of pharmaceuticals: inhaled glucocorticosteroids, leukotriene receptor antagonists, cromones, beta-2-agonists and long-acting theophyllines, systemic glucocorticosteroids and anti-IgE-therapy. However, despite a wide range of approaches to anti-inflammatory baseline therapy, it is still a problem to obtain the disease control in most patients indicating the necessity for searching new therapeutic approaches. In this regard, to optimize pathogenetic therapy of bronchial asthma, the work is being currently carried out to improve the existing anti-inflammatory drugs and their combinations. Moreover, there is a search for crucially new approaches to asthma treatment with due consideration of the disease phenotypes and endotypes including development and practical application of pharmaceutical drugs with anti-cytokine and anti-mediator effects. Probably, as far as the knowledge of molecular characteristics of asthma endotypes is being refined, and there being introduced the biomarkers enabling to diagnose asthma phenotypes and endotypes and monitor asthma control, there will be implemented an individual approach in individual therapy administration.

The aim of the investigation was to assess the significance of the content of metabolites of the nitric oxide, sICAM-1 and sICAM-3 in blood serum and in exhaled breath condensate, the serum level of endothelin-1 as systemic and topical markers of inflammation in patients with COPD, and their correlations with the parameters of lung ventilation function. Materials and Methods. 91 patients with COPD, aged from 46 to 67, and 21 healthy, non-smoking volunteers took part in the study. The material for investigation was blood serum and exhaled breath condensate.Results. The severity of progression of COPD was linked with an increase in the serum content of sCD50, sCD54, ET-1, as well as in the concentrations of metabolites of nitric oxide in blood and in exhaled breath condensate. For the patients with COPD we determined the associations between the function of pulmonary ventilation and the levels of ET-1, sICAM-1, sICAM-3 and the value of ΣNO 2 -/NO 3 -. The resulting correlations between the concentration of soluble adhesion molecules, the values of nitrosative stress, and ET-1 level indicate that they are involved in the genesis of chronic inflammation in COPD patients.Key words: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; COPD; endothelin-1; ET-1; nitrosative stress; soluble molecules of adhesion ICAM-1 and ICAM-3; exhaled breath condensate. Markers of progression of inflammation in COpDThe steady increase in the prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and the mortality rate associated with this pathology indicate the importance of studying the pathogenic mechanisms of development of this disease [1]. The identification of new activity markers and the progression of inflammation are key tasks in the studies of these mechanisms.The result of the immune-mediated mechanisms of inflammation in response to damaging factors is the excessive migration of effector cells to the

The aim of the investigation was to estimate the possibilities of using relative body mass index (RBMI) for determining age-and gender-specific aspects of nutritional status in children and adolescents with bronchial asthma (BA) of different severity degrees.Materials and Methods. The study involved 887 children and adolescents with BA of different severities, aged 5-17 years (61-215 months), of them 655 were boys. Their body mass index (BMI) was evaluated based on the Z-score criterion and nutritional status was determined as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). To unify nutritional status assessment in patients of different age and gender groups, there was introduced RBMI representing the ratio of the patient's BMI to gender-and age-specific median BMI value presented in the WHO reference data.Results. Nutritional status and its relation to BA were studied in children and adolescents using two parameters: the standard nutritional status indicator based on BMI Z-scores as recommended by WHO, and a new parameter, RBMI, representing the ratio of the patient's BMI to gender-and age-specific median BMI value recommended by WHO. No significant nutritional status differences were found in the studied sample of patients with various degrees of BA severity. There was revealed a tendency to a decrease in the proportion of children with normal body weight and an increase in the proportion of overweight children as BA severity increased, χ 2 =26.82; р=0.08. Conclusion. Using RBMI for assessment of BA patients makes it possible to significantly facilitate clinical data analysis and obtain new data unavailable when standard parameters are applied.Key words: bronchial asthma; nutritional status of children; obesity in asthma; body mass index; relative body mass index.

No abstract