Mohammadali Saba*
Background: Asthma is a serious and chronic lung disease that is associated with inflammation and increasing the sensitivity of airways. A number of patients, despite having clinical symptoms, do not have the spirometry criteria for a definitive diagnosis of asthma therefore, we use methacholine stimulation test. But since in different studies the relationship between the frequency of respiratory symptoms in suspected asthmatic patients and the positive results of the methacholine test is not definitely clear, in this study, we decided to evaluate the predictive value of respiratory symptoms in suspected asthmatic patients in comparison to results of its methacholine test.
Method: This study was conducted on 147 suspected asthma patients. At first, the patients were subjected to methacholine test and divided into two methacholine negative and positive groups. Then the frequency of clinical symptoms between the two groups was analyzed.
Results: In this study, out of 147 patients studied, 61 were women (41.4%) and 86 (58.6%) were men. The results of this study showed that there is a significant relationship between two methacholine positive and negative groups in terms of shortness of breath (60% versus 19.3%), wheezing (29.5% versus 7.7%) and morning sputum (30.5% against 4%).
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that there is no significant relationship between the two groups of methacholine positive and methacholine negative in terms of age and sex in suspected asthma patients, but there is a significant relationship between these two groups in terms of shortness of breath, wheezing and morning sputum. The result of our study also showed that cough as a clinical symptom in suspected asthmatic patients has no significant relationship with two groups of positive and negative methacholine test and it cannot be a suitable predictive index in patients suspected with asthmatic.
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