الفهرس 
Introduction and aim of the workOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Asthma is characterized by airway hyperresponsiveness, inflammation and airflow obstruction. During airway inflammation, there is an increased number of eosinophils in airway, blood and bronchial mucosa. EDN is a serological biomarker that has been proposed and evaluated as the marker of allergic manifestations like asthma.
This study was a case control study. It aimed to study the level of serum EDN in asthmatic children and in relation to clinical, functional diagnoses as well as severity.
The study was carried out on sixty six asthmatic children. Patients were recruited from Pediatric Chest outpatients’ clinic, Children’s hospital, faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University.
Patients according to clinical scoring and spirometric results (GINA, 2009) were divided into three equal groups :
Twenty two asthmatic children with intermittent asthma [mean age 7.34 0.7 years, 12 boys (54.5%) and 10 girls (45.5%)], 22 asthmatic children with mild to moderate asthma [mean age 9.71 1.24 years, 15 boys (68.2%) and 7 girls (31.8%)] and 22 asthmatic children with moderate to severe persistent asthma [mean age 11.93 0.9 years, 14 boys (63.6%) and 8 girls (36.4%)] .
Sixty six healthy children (age and sex matched) with no previous history of atopic disorders were included as controls.
All candidates were subjected to full clinical evaluation, estimation of absolute eosinophilic count, measurement of total serum IgE and serum EDN level. Allergy skin test and spirometric tests were done for all patients as well.
The study gave the following results:
1- Serum EDN levels were significantly higher in asthmatic children than controls, p-value <0.001.
2- Serum EDN levels were significantly higher in atopic asthmatics than non atopics, p-value 0.002.
3- Serum EDN levels were higher in children with moderate to severe asthma than the other two groups, p-value <0.001.
4- Serum EDN level correlated positively with AEC and IgE levels with p-values <0.001 and correlation coefficient 0.839, 0.832 respectively.
5- Serum EDN level correlated negatively with all spirometric parameters values (FEV1, FVC, FEV1/FVC, PEF, FEF25-75%) with p-values <0.001and correlation coefficient -0.919, -0.916, -0.639, -0.913, -0.746 respectively.
These findings imply that serum EDN level is directly associated with diagnosis of asthma. Therefore serum EDN level could be used as a biomarker to identify, monitor asthma, grading of severity and reflection of atopy.