Early predictors for adult asthma and lung function abnormalities in infants hospitalized for bronchiolitis: a prospective 18- to 20-year follow-up.

In the present cohort, 85% of infants hospitalized for wheezing outgrew their symptoms until puberty, but 30-40% had asthma, depending on criteria, again in young adulthood. The aim of this study was to determine early predictors for adulthood asthma, bronchial reactivity, and lung function abnormalities in infants hospitalized for bronchiolitis. Fifty-two children hospitalized for bronchiolitis at < 2 years of age were restudied at the median age of 19 years.

Hand-held turbine spirometer: agreement with the conventional spirometer at baseline and after exercise.

Portable hand-held spirometers are widely used in outpatient clinics and in field surveys when examining children for asthma. However, the validity of the results obtained from the hand-held spirometers has not been assessed in population-based studies. We evaluated the agreement between the forced expiratory volume (FEV1) values got by the conventional flow volume spirometer (FVS) and the pocket-sized turbine spirometer (TS) at baseline and after exercise, among the 212 children screened for asthma and asthma-like symptoms from a population of 1633 school-aged children.

Asthma and lung function 20 years after wheezing in infancy: results from a prospective follow-up study.

Objective: To determine the outcome until adulthood after wheezing in infancy, compared with pneumonia in infancy and with controls.

Design: An 18- to-20-year prospective cohort study.

Setting: Pediatric department at a university hospital, providing primary hospital care for a defined population.

Serum dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate concentration as an indicator of adrenocortical suppression during inhaled steroid therapy in adult asthmatic patients.

Objective: Supraphysiological doses of exogenous glucocorticosteroids cause adrenocortical suppression. Dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S) is the most abundant adrenal androgen and estrogen precursor. We studied to what extent inhaled glucocorticosteroid therapy for asthma decreases serum DHEA-S concentrations.

Transactivation assay for determination of glucocorticoid bioactivity in human serum.

We have developed a mammalian cell (COS-1) bioassay, which measures glucocorticoid bioactivity (GBA) directly from a small amount of human serum. The assay is based on the expression of human glucocorticoid receptor (GR) together with a coactivator protein and reporter plasmid containing GR response elements upstream of the luciferase gene. Ten microliters of human serum, in duplicate, are added directly to the cell culture medium, and GBA is derived from reporter gene activity.