Objective: To analyse the GARD perspective on the health effects of outdoor air pollution, and to synthesise the Portuguese epidemiological contribution to knowledge on its respiratory impact. Results: Ambient air pollution has deleterious respiratory effects which are more apparent in larger, densely populated and industrialised countries, such as Canada, Iran, Brazil and Portugal, but it also affects people l...
A epidemia de Coronavirus Disease 2019 disseminou-se pelo mundo em poucos meses, levando à sua designação de pandemia. Múltiplas medidas de saúde pública foram implementadas nos países afetados para conter e mitigar a disseminação da doença. A necessidade de distanciamento físico leva a que esta pandemia tenha um impacto importante na sociedade e particularmente no desporto, provocando cancelamento e adiamento ...
Background: Asthma affects the lives of hundred million people around the World. Despite notable progresses in disease management, asthma control remains largely insufficient worldwide, influencing patients' wellbeing and quality of life. Poor patient handling of inhaling devices has been identified as a major persistent problem that significantly reduces inhaled drugs' efficacy and is associated with poor adhe...
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive and fatal lung disease that up to now has been associated with a poor prognosis. However, the results of the INPULSIS and ASCEND trials and the approval of nintedanib and pirfenidone have marked the beginning of a new era for IPF patients. Questions remain, however. Should these drugs be used earlier? What effect will they have on more severe disease? Will th...
Despite elevated incidence and recurrence rates for Primary Spontaneous Pneumothorax (PSP), little is known about its etiology, and the genetics of idiopathic PSP remains unexplored. To identify genetic variants contributing to sporadic PSP risk, we conducted the first PSP genome-wide association study. Two replicate pools of 92 Portuguese PSP cases and of 129 age- and sex-matched controls were allelotyped in t...
The Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) initiative commenced during a World Health Organization workshop in 1999. The initial goals were (1) to propose a new allergic rhinitis classification, (2) to promote the concept of multi-morbidity in asthma and rhinitis and (3) to develop guidelines with all stakeholders that could be used globally for all countries and populations. ARIA-disseminated and im...
OBJECTIVE: The best combination of questions to define asthma in epidemiological asthma studies is not known. We summarized the operational definitions of asthma used in prevalence studies and empirically assess how asthma prevalence estimates vary depending on the definition used. METHODS: We searched the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of knowledge and included (1) cross-sectional studies (2) on asthma prevalence (3)...