Department of Pulmonology, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
Department of Pulmonology, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
Chest. 2011 Feb;139(2):412-423. doi: 10.1378/chest.10-1210.
Asthma and COPD have a high personal, societal, and economic impact. Both diseases are characterized by airway obstruction and an inflammatory process. The inflammatory process affects the whole respiratory tract, from central to peripheral airways that are <2 mm in internal diameter, the so-called small airways. There is an increased interest in small airway disease, and some new insights have been gained about the contribution of these small airways to the clinical expression of asthma and COPD, as reviewed in this article. Newly developed devices enable drugs to target the small airways, and this may have implications for treatment of patients with asthma, particularly those not responding to large-particle inhaled corticosteroids or those with uncontrollable asthma. The first studies in COPD are promising, and results from new studies are eagerly awaited.
哮喘和 COPD 对个人、社会和经济都有很大的影响。这两种疾病的特征都是气道阻塞和炎症过程。炎症过程会影响整个呼吸道，从中央气道到内径 <2 毫米的外周气道，也就是所谓的小气道。人们对小气道疾病越来越感兴趣，并且已经对这些小气道对哮喘和 COPD 的临床表现的贡献有了一些新的认识，本文对此进行了综述。新开发的设备使药物能够靶向小气道，这可能对治疗哮喘患者具有重要意义，尤其是那些对大颗粒吸入性皮质类固醇没有反应或哮喘无法控制的患者。在 COPD 中的首批研究结果令人鼓舞，人们急切地期待新研究的结果。
