| Summary: | <p>Asthma is a chronic disease of airway hyper-responsiveness, airway
inflammation and episodic bronchoconstriction. With asthma forecasted to increase by an
additional 100 million cases by 2025, there is a critical and immediate need to address
new asthma therapies. Guidelines for asthma treatment in the emergency department
conditionally recommend intravenous magnesium sulfate (MgSO<sub>4</sub>). However, some
investigations have failed to demonstrate beneficial effects. Ethical constraints limit
evaluation of the bronchodilatory effects of MgSO<sub>4</sub> alone in patients with acute asthma
exacerbation, independent of other conventional therapeutics. To address this ethical
dilemma, this study consisted of two phases: 1) quantification of the independent
pulmonary effect of three doubling doses of MgSO<sub>4</sub> in the spontaneous equine model of
asthma during naturally occurring exacerbations of bronchoconstriction, and 2)
evaluation of arterial blood gas parameters in response to administration of MgSO<sub>4</sub> at a
dose identified in phase 1 that yielded greatest efficacy without deleterious side effects. </p>
|
|---|
