American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine
-
Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Jan 2015
ReviewIncident Pneumonia and Mortality in COPD Patients - A Double-Effect of Inhaled Corticosteroids?
Inhaled corticosteroids are commonly prescribed for patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Although their use improves quality of life and reduces exacerbations, it is associated with increased risk of pneumonia. Curiously, their use has not been associated with increased risk of pneumonia-related or overall mortality. ⋯ Unlike pneumonia, mortality is a precise outcome. Despite the robust association of inhaled corticosteroid use with increased risk of pneumonia, all studies find either no difference or a reduction in pulmonary-related and overall mortality associated with the use of inhaled corticosteroids. These observations suggest a double effect of inhaled corticosteroids (i.e., an adverse effect plus an unexplained mitigating effect).
-
Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Jan 2015
ReviewNovel Approaches Are Needed to Develop Tomorrow's Antibacterial Therapies.
Society faces a crisis of rising antibiotic resistance even as the pipeline of new antibiotics has been drying up. Antibiotics are a public trust; every individual's use of antibiotics affects their efficacy for everyone else. As such, responses to the antibiotic crisis must take a societal perspective. ⋯ Finally, regulatory reform is needed so that clinical development programs are feasible, rigorous, and clinically relevant. Pulmonary and critical care specialists can have tremendous impact on the continued availability of effective antibiotics. Encouraging use of molecular diagnostic tests to allow pathogen-targeted, narrow-spectrum antibiotic therapy, using short rather than unnecessarily long course therapy, reducing inappropriate antibiotic use for probable viral infections, and reducing infection rates will help preserve the antibiotics we have for future generations.
-
Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Jan 2015
ReviewToward Primary Prevention of Asthma: Reviewing the Evidence for Early-Life Respiratory Viral Infections as Modifiable Risk Factors to Prevent Childhood Asthma.
A first step in primary disease prevention is identifying common, modifiable risk factors that contribute to a significant proportion of disease development. Infant respiratory viral infection and childhood asthma are the most common acute and chronic diseases of childhood, respectively. ⋯ However, there has long been debate over the role of these respiratory viruses in asthma inception. In this article, we systematically review the evidence linking early-life RSV and RV LRTIs with asthma inception and whether they could therefore be targets for primary prevention efforts.
-
The United States Preventive Services Task Force recommends lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) in adults of age 55 to 80 years who have a 30 pack-year smoking history and are currently smoking or have quit within the past 15 years. This recommendation is largely based on the findings of the National Lung Screening Trial. ⋯ Effective screening requires an appreciation that screening should be limited to individuals at high risk of death from lung cancer, and that the risk of harm related to false positive findings, overdiagnosis, and unnecessary invasive testing is real. A comprehensive understanding of these aspects of screening will inform appropriate implementation, with the objective that an evidence-based and systematic approach to screening will help to reduce the enormous mortality burden of lung cancer.