BRONCHIAL ASTHMA

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the airways, which is associatedwith excessive airway narrowing in response to stimuli that have little or no effect on healthysubjects. Airway hyper-responsiveness with a short duration of asthma is coupled with airwayinflammation which may or may not be associated with lung impairment. Objectives: To studycorrelation of asthma duration with total anti oxidant capacity and lung function parameters.Design: Cross sectional study. Period: June 2013 to Dec 2013. Setting: Baqai MedicalUniversity and Hospital. Methodology: A total of 92 known and diagnosed cases of asthmameeting the inclusion criteria were recruited in the study. The subjects included both male andfemale with age ranging from 16-70 years. Portable handheld electronic Spirometer was usedfor performing spirometry. FRAP assay was done to measure TAC according to the method ofBenzie and Strai. Results: The mean age of patients (n-92) was 34.88±12.14 SD. The meanduration of asthma was 11.57 ± 11.30 SD years. Mean value of TAC was found to be 11.46± 4.34SD. Mean FEVI was 1.90±0.82SD, mean FVC was 2.17±0.88 SD, mean PEFR was247.8±122.7 SD and mean FEV1/FVC was 86.21±16.58 SD. Paired sample t – test was appliedto compare the spirometric values which were found highly significant. Pearson correlationwas applied and showed negative but insignificant correlation of asthma duration with patients’FEV1, FEV1/FVC and PEFR as well as insignificant correlation with other spirometric parametersand TAC. Conclusion: Our study showed that duration of asthma has no significant correlationwith lung function parameters and antioxidant capacity.