History

Background: Asthma is a long-lasting inflammatory illness manifested as airway hyper-responsiveness induced by a series of inflammatory processes in the respiratory tract that can cause severe signs of an asthmatic attack. Periostin seems to subsidize numerous pathologic pathways in bronchial asthma, such as subepithelial fibrosis, eosinophil accumulations, and mucus overproduction from the goblet cells. This study intended to assess the plasma levels of periostin in bronchial asthma and its association with asthma severity. Methods: This was a case-control study, that included 163 asthma patients and 152 healthy control. The patients were diagnosed and supervised by the pulmonologists at Merjan Medical City hospital, Babylon, Iraq. in addition to serum levels of periostin, the study parameters included age, height, weight, gender, and family history, and the spirometric variables including FEV1, FVC, FEV1/FVC ratio, PEFR%, and the level of asthma control were evaluated depending upon GINA-guidelines. The serum levels of periostin were compared between asthma patients and the healthy control, using SPSS and a p-value < 0.05 as significant. Results: The mean ages of the studied members were 48.6 ± 5.9year, and 208 (65.6%) out of 317 were males. Serum periostin was significantly higher among the asthma group (P-0.05). the peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) between asthmatic and control groups, which shows a significant difference (P-0.001). There was a significant difference in the distribution of periostin levels according to the severity of asthma based on the PEFR%, (P-0.001). Conclusion: The study concluded that measurements of serum periostin levels revealed a significant difference between asthmatic and healthy controls. Periostin levels were significantly increased with the severity of asthma based on the evaluation of PEFR%.