Bronchial asthma could belong to the group of systemic inflammatory diseases

Abstract

Introduction: hypertensive cardiovascular disease is a complex, multifactorial, and chronic illness, frequently beginning during childhood or adolescence, that could lead to functional and/or structural organ damage by increase in arterial stiffness and the volume/pressure curve, that in turn can increase the stress into the ventricular-arterial coupling and could produce the appearance of arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation. This study aims to evaluate patients with bronchial asthma with non-invasive arterial tonometry to determine its possible similarity with systemic inflammatory diseases and also the capability of presenting brief episodes of atrial fibrillation. Materials and Methods: this was a retrospective, cross-sectional study of 435 patients, of whom 93 were chronic asthmatics and the rest had systemic inflammatory diseases such as psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, celiac disease, Sjögren's syndrome and Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, endometriosis, and polycystic ovary syndrome. General and anthropological data, blood pressure, and central hemodynamic parameters were recorded using noninvasive arterial tonometry. Episodes of atrial fibrillation were recorded during 24-hour ambulatory electrocardiographic Holter monitoring. Results: statistically comparing the data of asthmatics with all systemic inflammatory diseases and in both sexes separately, no significant differences were observed. Conclusions: According to these observations, bronchial asthma presents a similarity with systemic inflammatory diseases due to damage to the arterial wall and the presence of brief phases of atrial fibrillation.