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 (MgSO4). However, some investigations have failed to demonstrate beneficial effects. Ethical constraints limit evaluation of the bronchodilatory effects of MgSO4 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 MgSO4 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 MgSO4 at a dose identified in phase 1 that yielded greatest efficacy without deleterious side effects.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MSSTATE/oai:scholarsjunction.msstate.edu:td-2666 |
| Date | 06 May 2017 |
| Creators | Wenzel, Caitlin Jael |
| Publisher | Scholars Junction |
| Source Sets | Mississippi State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
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