Asthma improved by aspirin-like drugs.

In six adult patients with bronchial asthma aspirin in a single dose of 0.3-1.2 g produced bronchodilatation with a marked improvement in both clinical symptoms and pulmonary function tests. In these patients asthma was characterized by the following traits: onset after a flu-like infection, perennial course, lack of relation to specific allergenic exposures, negative skin tests with common aeroallergens, and history of rhinorrhoea or sinusitis. Oral challenge with 12 nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs performed in two patients showed that bronchodilatation could be induced not only by aspirin but also by other drugs which inhibit cyclo-oxygenase. This response to aspirin is rare and proper diagnosis is of vital importance, since the same aspirin-like drugs which proved effective in these patients may provoke dangerous bronchoconstriction in other clinically indistinguishable patients with asthma.