See article, page 193

See article, page 203

The inclusion of disease-specific group education in pulmonary rehabilitation for COPD was evaluated in a randomized controlled trial. Education incorporating self-management did not result in any additional benefit compared with pulmonary rehabilitation without education. These findings support the delivery of simple exercise-based pulmonary rehabilitation programmes when resources are limited.

See Editorial, page 151

Patients with NCFB are characterized by chronic sputum production and an underlying vicious cycle of infection, inflammation and mucus retention. We show that sputum colour assessment is an easy, quick and reliable way that reflects underlying disease severity, proteolytic enzymatic activity/presence and inflammation.

See Editorial, page 153

The prevalence of gastro-oesophageal reflux in adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or bronchiectasis is twice as high compared with individuals without lung disease. The findings of this observational study suggest that gastro-oesophageal reflux is a common comorbidity across the disease spectrum in adults with these lung conditions.

Indirect immunofluorescence assays were performed to detect immunoglobulin M antibodies against nine pathogens to provide an important dataset for use in clinical diagnoses and the development of more effective therapeutic regimens in the future.

This study demonstrated β-glucan—a fungal cell wall agent—in the lungs of sarcoidosis patients. It also confirmed a positive relationship between β-glucan and domestic fungi exposure. Lung granuloma infiltration correlated inflammatory cytokines except IL-10, an anti-granuloma cytokine.

We investigated the effect of indacaterol on FEV₁, dyspnoea and health-related quality of life in a predominantly Chinese population diagnosed with moderate-to-severe COPD. Indacaterol proved to be a useful treatment option as it showed effective bronchodilation and improvements in breathlessness and health status in this population.

We compared outcome and prognostic factors between CPFE and IPF alone. We found that, survival for individuals with CPFE was significantly worse than that for IPF alone. Especially, CPFE with paraseptal emphysema associated with high esPAP has an extremely poor prognosis.

Serum CYFRA 21-1 is useful for the diagnosis of autoimmune pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (APAP) by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis and significantly correlated with other disease severity markers of APAP. Serum CYFRA 21-1 might be a predictor of responsiveness to GM-CSF inhalation therapy in APAP.

Our study showed that in individuals with smoking risk factor, high expression of HMGB1 in the blood and lungs is related to the decline of lung function and appears to be associated with the development of COPD.

We demonstrate that variants in HTR4 are associated with COPD in never-smokers, and SNP in AGER are associated with lung function in a Chinese Han population.

In IPF, pulmonary hypertension is associated with poor prognosis. Cardiopulmonary exercise testing can be used for early detection of a vascular impairment. An increased ventilatory equivalent at anaerobic threshold, a parameter of vascular impairment, was associated with mortality, and may be useful for more accurate prognostic assessment in IPF patients.

We investigated if asthmatic children inhale the same proportion of the prescribed dose of fluticasone, beclomethasone dipropionate and flunisolide from the same nebulizer. Results demonstrate that the prescribed dose bears little resemblance to the proportion of drug children inhale and that this is largely dependent on the drug formulation.

The non-eosinophilic phenotype of asthma is associated with chronic airway inflammation and airway neutrophilia. The role of granzyme B in NEA is not known. Increased granzyme B expression in NEA may contribute to increased epithelial cell apoptosis, lung injury and chronic inflammation.