ERS Highlights

There is a wide range of eosinophil-associated disorders, from common conditions, such as eosinophilic asthma and chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP), to rarer ones, such as eosinophilic gastrointestinal disorders and hypereosinophilic syndrome (HES). The advent of eosinophil-targeted therapies is uncovering which of these disorders are primarily treatable by reducing blood or tissue eosinophils, thus […]

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related death.1 However, five-year survival in lung cancer varies greatly based on the stage of the disease at diagnosis.2 Early lung cancer diagnosis through screening with low-dose computed tomography (CT) demonstrated a 20% reduction in lung cancer mortality in current or former smokers with a history of 30 or more […]

Dr Paula K Skarda is a hospitalist and primary internist and works for HealthPartners and Regions Hospital in Minnesota, USA. She has been in practice for 25 years after graduating from the University of Minnesota Medical School and completing the MedPeds residency there. Dr Skarda works as an Associate Program Director for the University of […]

Asthma is a common and heterogeneous disease affecting approximately 10% of the population.1 Severe asthma – a subset of the disease that affects a fraction of patients with asthma but comprises more than half of the morbidity, mortality and costs relating to asthma – is predominantly caused by smouldering type-2 eosinophilic airway inflammation.2,3 Until now, the main strategy […]

Electronic nicotine delivery systems, colloquially referred to as e-cigarettes (ECs), or vaping products were introduced in the US market in 2007 as an alternative to cigarette smoking. They were marketed as a better alternative to nicotine replacement therapy for stopping cigarette smoking, as ECs are considered less harmful than tobacco cigarette smoking.1 These findings have been […]

Welcome to the latest edition of touchREVIEWS in Respiratory & Pulmonary Diseases, which aims to provide insightful and topical articles relevant to the everyday practice of busy physicians. Our popular expert interviews provide a snapshot of hot topics in medicine. In the first of our interviews, Andrew Menzies-Gow discusses the clinical data leading to the US […]

Smoking is one of the biggest avoidable causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide and is a significant burden to healthcare systems. Without intervention, the annual total of 7.69 million deaths and 200 million disability-adjusted life-years caused by smoking are likely to increase over the coming decades.1 Several smoking cessation interventions have proven to be effective; however, […]

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are disorders with predominantly chronic inflammatory airway features. They are increasingly recognized as entities on a heterogeneous obstructive airway disease continuum with distinct phenotypes, various degrees of overlap, and the predominance of asthma in some individuals and COPD in others.1 In asthma, chronic inflammation is driven by aberrant […]

Paediatric sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) refers to a spectrum of respiratory disorders with intermittent upper-airway obstruction and sleep disruption in children.1 SDB spans primary snoring, upper-airway resistance syndrome, obstructive hypoventilation and obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), listed in order of increasing severity of SDB stratified by polysomnography.2 Paediatric OSA is characterized by recurring episodes of airway obstruction, which […]