Asthma and COPD: similarities, differences, concurrences, and phenotypes

作者：Fumagalli Giorgio^*; Sanguinetti Claudio M

来源：Multidisciplinary Respiratory Medicine, 2009, 4(6): 419-422.

• Asthma
• COPD
• FEV(1)
• decline

Obstructive pulmonary diseases represent the majority of all pulmonary diseases. Among obstructive diseases, discrimination between chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma is the basis for diagnosis and therapy in the clinical setting, and constitutes one of the inclusion criteria in international randomized trials.
Distinguishing asthma from COPD is no longer so simple as it once seemed, on account of the improved knowledge about the molecular and structural frameworks and that gained from recent large cohort studies. The pattern of flow obstruction and its reversibility, subjects' age, biomarkers and the progressive decline in lung function do not greatly differ between COPD and asthma and are not exclusive to one or other disease. In the present review of recent studies, we conclude that pulmonary function tests atone are insufficient for a correct distinction between asthma and COPD and underscore the need for a more probing diagnostic assessment so as to offer correct clinical information about the natural history of the diseases and the effects of therapy in real life.

• 出版日期2009-12