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o There was a signed consent form and a questionnaire filled out by their parent/s'
o The child was willing to be part of the study'
o The child had a doctor diagnosis of asthma'
o The child was on either bronchodilator therapy only or bronchodilator therapy and
long term IHCS therapy. No child studied was on any other asthma medications (such
as long acting p2 agonist therapy, theophylline or oral steroids). some of the children
were on topical treatments for eczema'
o There had been no change in their asthma treatment in the last six weeks'
o There was no current or recent upper or lower respiratory tract infection for at least
four weeks.
o The child had recorded no other respiratory, cardiac or other major chronic disease'
The ethical consent obtained for the study and the statistical analysis have been documented
previously in Section 8.2.
8.5.3 Protocol
The protocols for the asthmatic subjects were identical to those used the control subjects and
are listed in Section g.3.3 above. The two techniques of measurement were used: the direct to
analysers method and the t-piece sampling method' The children did one set of five
exhalations under each condition and continued until five sets of measurable exhalations were
made, or it became obvious that either the procedure was too difficult or it was exacerbating
their asthma. As the children were enrolled from either the morning clinics or the school (as
previously organised) all the children were measured at the same time during the day - late
morning between 1000 hours and 1300 hours'
8.5.4 Results
In total 31 asthmatic children were recruited for the studies of exhaled NO in asthma: fifteen
were on bronchodilator treatment only and 16 on regular IHCS therapy. The children with
asthma on bronchodilator treatment only had an FVC of 92Vo (SD 14.5) and FEVr of 78Vo
(sD 10.4) percent predicted by the Polgar reference equation @olgar and Promadh^t I97I)'
The children with asthma on regular IHCS had a mean FVC of 987o (SD 18.5) and FEVr of
g6qo (SD 17.5). The mean peak No level measured by the direct method in asthmatic children
on bronchodilator treatment only was 126.1ppb (SD 77.1, range L4.4-36l.lppb) which was
significantly higher than compared to the healthy children (mean 49'6ppb, SD 37'4' range
n.s-lgl.2ppb see previous results, p