Md. Abdul Gafur1, Fazle Elahi Nurani2, Md. Arif-Un-Nabi3, Mahmuda Qamrun Naher4
1. Associate Professor (C. C.) of Respiratory Medicine, Department of Medicine, North East Medical College Hospital, Sylhet
2. Professor (C. C.), Department of Medicine, North East Medical College Hospital, Sylhet
3. Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology, Sheikh Hasina Medical College, Hobigonj
4. Professor & Head, Department of Physiology, North East Medical College Hospital, Sylhet
Abstract
In any health-care-setting throughout the world, a significant number of patients seek medical help for their sufferings from a variety of obstructive airway diseases on a regular basis. Differentiating bronchial-asthma (BA) from chronic-obstructive-pulmonary-disease (COPD) can be difficult but is important, because of the differences in treatment, disease progression, and outcomes between the two conditions. The purpose of our study was to find out how significant were the serum levels of Immunoglobulin-E (IgE) among our study-population, which would on one hand help us to label doubtful cases either as BA or as COPD, and on the other hand would help us to consider the use of a monoclonal-antibody therapy (eg. Omalizumab). During the year of 2022 CE, conducted over 8 months, a total of 134 patients with a diagnosis of BA or COPD, attending the chamber of a respiratory-medicine specialist, were additionally evaluated for their serum IgE levels. Younger patients and Asthmatic patients were found to be significantly related with abnormally high IgE (p=0.049 and p=0.042 respectively) while neither male/female gender were significantly related with abnormally high IgE. It was predicted that anti-IgE therapy can produce better outcome in the management of young asthmatic patients.
Key Words: Serum immunoglobulin E, bronchial asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.