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Objective. To determine the relation between the moderating fee and the frequency of consultations to emergency services in patients with asthma who belong to the contributory insurance regime in Colombia. Methods. A retrospective cohort - analytical observational study was conducted which included contributors over the age of 18 with a diagnosis of asthma, users of the contributory regime who were registered in the database for calculating the Capitation Unit between the years 2012 and 2014; the patients were recruited during 2013 and the cohort was followed for one year from the admission date; the consultation frequency at the emergency service was used as the outcome variable, the influence of the principal confounding variables was evaluated, and a model of negative binomial regression for data analysis was applied. Results. 54 516 asthmatic patients with their comorbidities were included, of which 13.69% consulted emergency services. After controlling by the Charlson index and age of emergency consultation, the risk of consulting emergency services is 1.1 times more frequent in level 3 of the moderating fee with respect to level 1. Conclusions. It is suggested that moderating fee could behave as an access barrier to health services in asthmatic patients. It is recommended that studies to evaluate this hypothesis more precisely be carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asthma is a public health problem; in Mexico asthma is included among the ten causes of hospital and medical care. Exacerbations of asthma (asthma attacks or acute asthma) are episodes of progressive increase in shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing, tightness in the chest, or a combination of these symptoms. It has been identified airway infections, as the major etiology of exacerbations. Microbiological study of the sputum of the 90 patients included in this study was performed. The results showed that pathogenic microorganisms associated to asthma exacerbations were isolated in almost 50% of the samples analyzed, the pathogens isolated were bacterias followed by virus. In contrast to previous studies, in this study bacterias were isolated in higher proportion than virus. However, we are not able to conclude that bacterias or virus infections are responsible of the exacerbations, because it was not possible to found a strong association between the severity of the crisis and the presence of some pathogens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The glutathione S-transferases (GST) represent a superfamily of enzymes present in all aerobic organisms. There are three main families that are widely distributed in nature and are classified into cytosolic glutathione s transferases, mitochondrial and microsomal according to their location in the cell. Polymorphisms reported in the genes encoding these enzymes have been associated with the onset of diseases such as asthma under the influence of environmental contaminants. The frequency distribution of these polymorphisms is different in the populations and therefore the susceptibility of individuals to the diseases therefore the susceptibility of individuals to the diseases polymorphisms in GST and their relation with the respiratory diseases, we present a theoretical review updates on the properties and functions of glutathione S transferases, description of genetic polymorphisms and methodologies used for genotyping, as well as their participation in the pathogenesis of asthma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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