Abstract
Methacholine testing is one of the standard tools for the diagnosis of mild asthma, but there is little information about optimal outcome measures. In this study a total of 395 college students were tested by the ATS dosimeter protocol for methacholine testing, with minor modification. Body plethysmography and spirometry were measured after each inhalation step. The end-of-test-criteria were (i) decrease in forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) of ≥ 20 % and (ii) doubling of specific airway resistance and its increase to ≥ 2.0 kPa∙s. The results were expressed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) plots using questionnaire answers as a reference. The areas under the ROC curves were iteratively calculated for a wide range of thresholds for both measures. We found that ROC plots showed maximal sensitivities of about 0.5–0.6 for FEV1 and about 0.7 for specific airway conductance (sGt), with similar specificities of about 0.7–0.8 taking questions with the known high specificity as references. Accordingly, larger maximal areas under the ROC curve were observed for body plethysmography, but the differences were small. A decrease in FEV1 of about 15 % and a decrease of sGt of about 60 % showed the largest areas under the ROC curves. In conclusion, body plethysmography yielded better sensitivity than spirometry, with similar specificity. However, replacing the common spirometric criterium for a positive test (20 % decrease in FEV1 from baseline) by the optimal body plethysmographic criterium would result in an increase of false positive tests from about 4 to 8 % in healthy young adults.
References
ATS- American Thoracic Society (1995) Standardization of spirometry (1994 update). Am J Respir Crit Care Med 152:1107–1136
ATS- American Thoracic Society (2000) Guidelines for methacholine and exercise challenge testing-1999. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 161:309–329
Cockcroft DW, Berscheid BA (1983) Measurement of responsiveness to inhaled histamine: comparison of FEV1 and sGaw. Ann Allergy 51:374–377
Cockcroft DW, Davis BE (2006) The bronchoprotective effect of inhaling methacholine by using total lung capacity inspirations has a marked influence on the interpretation of the test result. J Allergy Clin Immunol 117:1244–1248
Criée CP, Sorichter S, Smith HJ, Kardos P, Merget R, Heise D, Berdel D, Köhler D, Magnussen H, Marek W, Mitfessel H, Rasche K, Rolke M, Worth H, Jörres RA (2011) Body plethysmography - its principles and clinical use. Respir Med 105:959–973
Dehaut P, Rachiele A, Martin RR, Malo JL (1983) Histamine dose–response curves in asthma: reproducibility and sensitivity of different indices to assess response. Thorax 38:516–522
Goldstein MF, Pacana SM, Dvorin DJ, Dunsky EH (1994) Retrospective analyses of methacholine inhalation challenges. Chest 105:1082–1088
Hollie MC, Malone RA, Skufca RM, Nelson HS (1991) Extreme variability in aerosol output of the DeVilbiss 646 jet nebulizer. Chest 100:1339–1344
Jörres R, Nowak D, Rabe K, Magnussen H (1992) Variability in aerosol output of the DeVilbiss 646 jet nebulizer. Chest 102:1636
Khalid I, Morris ZQ, Digiovine B (2009) Specific conductance criteria for a positive methacholine challenge test: are the American Thoracic Society guidelines rather generous? Respir Care 54:1168–1174
Michoud MC, Ghezzo H, Amyot R (1982) A comparison of pulmonary function tests used for bronchial challenges. Bull Eur Physiopathol Respir 18:609–621
Nensa F, Kotschy-Lang N, Smith HJ, Marek W, Merget R (2013) Assessment of airway hyperresponsiveness: Comparison of spirometry and body plethysmography. Adv Exp Med Biol 755:1–9
O’Connor G, Sparrow D, Taylor D, Segal M, Weiss S (1987) Analysis of dose response curves to methacholine. An approach suitable for population studies. Am Rev Respir Dis 136:1412–1417
Quanjer PH, Tammeling GJ, Cotes JE, Pedersen OF, Peslin R, Yernault JC (1993) Lung volumes and forced ventilatory flows. Report working party standardization of lung function tests, European community for steel and coal. Eur Respir J 6(Suppl 16):5–40
Zweig MH, Campbell G (1993) Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) plots: a fundamental evaluation tool in clinical medicine. Clin Chem 39:561–577
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest in relation to this study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Merget, R., Nensa, F., Heinze, E., Taeger, D., Bruening, T. (2015). Spirometry or Body Plethysmography for the Assessment of Bronchial Hyperresponsiveness?. In: Pokorski, M. (eds) Allergy and Respiration. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology(), vol 921. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/5584_2015_204
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/5584_2015_204
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42003-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42004-2
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)