Impact of race on the severity of acute episodes of asthma and adrenergic responsiveness.

Rationale: African Americans acutely ill with asthma come to emergency departments more frequently and are admitted to hospital more often than whites but the reasons are unclear.

Objectives: To determine whether such phenomena represent racial differences in attack severity or limited effectiveness of beta(2)-agonist therapy.

Methods And Main Results: We contrasted clinical features, airflow limitation, and albuterol responsiveness in adults acutely ill with asthma, 155 of whom where African American and 140 white, as they presented to eight emergency departments.

Desiccation and hypertonicity of the airway surface fluid and thermally induced asthma.

To determine whether drying and hypertonicity of the airway surface fluid (ASF) are involved in thermally induced asthma, nine subjects performed isocapnic hyperventilation (HV) (minute ventilation 62.2 +/- 8.3 l/min) of frigid air (-8.