Airway remodeling: a comparison between fatal and nonfatal asthma.

Background: Airway remodeling has been recently one of the main goals in asthma research because it has been implicated to influence airway behavior and evolution of asthma; hence, important in long-term followup of asthmatic patients.

Methods: Airways of fatal asthma (n=3), non-fatal asthma (n=3) and control cases (n=4) were studied using morphometry and immunohistochemical and H&E staining.

Results: The basement membrane was thicker in the cartilaginous and membranous airways of fatal and non-fatal asthma groups compared to the control group (p<0.

Clinical applications of real-time PCR for diagnosis and treatment of human cytomegalovirus infection in children.

There are many methods of detecting human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection. So far, the quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been very useful not only in aiding in the diagnosis of HCMV but also in determining the severity and predicting HCMV infection. However, it is time-consuming and labor intensive.