Current opinion in allergy and clinical immunology
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Curr Opin Allergy Clin Immunol · Feb 2005
Review Comparative StudyIs there a difference between chronic airway inflammation in chronic severe asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease?
The lack of a universally accepted definition of chronic severe asthma and the continuous changes in the classification of the severity of stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the last 10 years make it difficult to compare the many studies available. The aim of the review is to compare studies on chronic severe asthma that have a control group of patients with mild to moderate persistent asthma and studies on stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that have an age-matched control group of smokers with normal lung function (with or without chronic bronchitis). ⋯ These differences in chronic airway inflammation support the consensus that asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are different diseases along all their stages of severity.