ABSTRACT
In the aim to improve asthma management in children, we conduct an education programme including 22 children and their parents. All patients are under 15 years of age and at a stable state. They are ages between 3 and 15 years with a mean age of 6 years. The education teaching is in dialectal Arabic language. Giver information concerned physiopathology of asthma, anatomy of the airways, asthma attack symptoms, trigger and methods of their prevention, medication, delivery devices and practice of sport. By a direct and collective method, our education programme resulted in improvement of children and parent's knowledge on asthma and a reduction by half of acute episodes of asthma
ABSTRACT
Patients with asthma are characterized by mucosal infiltration of bronchi with inflammatory cells, mainly memory helper cells [CD4+ CD29+]. An important initiating step in tissue infiltration is the adhesion of peripheral blood lymphocytes to the vascular endothelium. Therefore, we studied lymphocyte - endothelium adhesion in 10 patients with asthma and in 10 healthy controls by a sensitive fluorimetric assay, using human umbilical vascular endothelial cells. Expression of adhesion molecule VLA [CD29] and LFA-1 [CD11a] on CD4+ and CD8+ T cells was determined. LFA-1 on T lymphocytes and its density was highly expressed in patients with asthma compared to healthy controls [P < 0,001]. Serum levels of slL-2R were significantly higher in patients group compared with controls [P<0,01]. Lymphocyte - endothelium adhesions was increased in patients with asthma. These results demontrate that peripheral blood lymphocytesare activated, as demontrated by elevated slL-2R levels and increased numbers of CD29+ cells. There was also increased lymphocyte adhesion to endothelial cells in asthma compared to controls, demonstrated that functional adhesion properties are correlated with more presence of CD29 on the cell