A study on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease overlaps among patients with obstructive airway diseases

Abstract

There is a need to re-evaluate the concept of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as separate conditions, and to consider situations when they may coexist, or when one condition may evolve into the other. This is prospective, observational and descriptive study conducted at MNR Medical College and Hospital, Sangareddy, India from June 2020 to December 2020 among chronic airway diseases who were classified into three groups (COPD, Asthma, and Asthma and COPD overlap (ACO)). Patients with COPD and ACO were diagnosed according to GOLD guidelines 2020 and patients with asthma were diagnosed according to Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) guidelines 2020. : Regarding the age difference between groups, it was found that patients who were diagnosed as having COPD and ACO were with mean age of 57.23±8.54 and 56.26±7.73 years, respectively. The men age of patients of Asthma was 57.51±8.43. In our study, 28 (30%) patients as having COPD, 39 (45.5%) patients were diagnosed as having ACO, 23 (24.4%) patients were diagnosed as having asthma. In our study comparison of groups regarding history of atopy. We found that 71.7% of ACO group, 78.2% of asthma group and 25% of COPD group had a positive history of atopy. Comparison of study groups regarding sputum eosinophils revealed that 30.7 % of ACO group, 73.9% of asthma group and 32.1% of COPD group had positive sputum eosinophils.  ACO represents a large percentage among patients with obstructive airway diseases. It shares some features of asthma such as atopy and positive sputum eosinophilia, and some features of COPD like old age of presentation and positive smoking history.