Asthma is an inflammatory disease of the airways; as such, anti- inflammatory drugs, for example inhaled corticosteroids, are now central to the treatment of asthma. Non-invasive techniques to quantify inflammation, such as sputum cytology, have not gained widespread acceptance and do not provide anatomic localization of asthmatic inflammation. This project proposes to apply positron emission tomography (PET) to these questions. To date, we have examined PET scans of 8 asthmatic and 6 non-allergic, non-asthmatics donors employing [18F]fluoro-D glucose (FDG) and a high resolution PET scanner. Initial results demonstrate that a large fraction of the signal obtained from PET scanning from lung tissue is attributable to blood rather than pulmonary inflammation. Asthmatic subjects had a larger pulmonary blood volume noted in these studies. - Asthma, inflammation, therapy, positron emission tomography, anatomy, pulmonary function - Human Subjects
