Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disorder characterized by airway inflammation, hyperresponsiveness, and variable obstruction of the airways. Although a thorough history and physical examination are key to the diagnosis of asthma, objective tests are needed for the confirmation of disease and to evaluate disease severity and efficacy of treatments. Objective tests available for patients with asthma include spirometry, methacholine and hypertonic saline provocation challenge tests, and measurement of exhaled nitric oxide (eNO). Often, a single test may not give a definitive diagnosis in a given clinical scenario. In such cases, physicians use 2 or 3 separate tests to arrive at a diagnosis. However, the correlations among the different objectives tests have not been well studied. Based on the previous work, we hypothesized that there may not be good correlations among spirometry, methacholine challenge testing, hypertonic saline challenge testing, and fractional eNO (FeNO) measurement12
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