Pharmacological treatment in asthma and COPD.

Many lines of previous studies have reported that differences and similarities between bronchial asthma (BA) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The pathological and physiological abnormalities of these diseases have been also discussed. BA and COPD have some similarities such as airflow obstruction, pulmonary inflammation, and airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR). However, both two diseases are regarded different diseases since their mechanisms of development are quite different. Therefore, both two diseases require different assessment, monitoring, and pharmacological treatments. In this paper, we describe the pharmacological treatment of asthma in adults and COPD based on recently updated guideline by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) and the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD), respectively.