ABSTRACT

Recently, chronic inflammation is held responsible in the pathogenesis of coronary heart disease. We assessed the prevalance of coronary heart disease in patients with bronchial asthma which is also a chronic inflammatory disease by exercise electrocardiography test. 52 patients Female (F):36, mean age:33.03±9.91, Male (M):16, mean age: 26.00±9.72 with mild to moderate bronchial asthma without any risk for coronary heart disease who have been regularly attending to the outpatient clinic of chest disease are enrolled into the study. None of the patients had acute asthmatic attack recently. As 8 patients were not receiving any treatment, 31 of them were receiving inhaler b2 adrenergic agonist therapy and 12 were receiving both inhaled b2 adrenergic agonists and inhaler corticosteroids. Skin tests for 29 of the patients revealed positivity for house dusts while mean levels of Ig E were 319.66±574.22 IU/ml. The levels of CRP was measured as 4.22±5.16 mg/dl. Serum levels of ferritin was 73.66±31.57 ng/ml, and eosinophilic cationic protein (ECP) was 11.22±11.16 μg/l. After the assessment of resting electrocardiograhy tests, the patients were reevaluated by exercise testing according to modified Bruce protocol. Exercise testing did not result with ischemia in any of the patients. In conclusion, although it is accepted that inflammation plays a major role in the pathophysiology of both diseases, we did not find an increase in the prevalance of coronary heart disease in patients with bronchial asthma in our study.