Asthma and hypertension: the role of airway inflammation

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory respiratory disease often associated with comorbidities. Among cardiovascular comorbidities, arterial hypertension seems to create an additional health burden in asthmatics. However, evidence on this relationship is lacking. Our study aims to evaluate the characteristics of hypertensive asthmatics, focusing on the role of inflammation as a possible link between these diseases. We conducted a monocentric retrospective analysis consecutively including asthmatics who underwent induced sputum (IS) at our asthma referral center. Patients were divided in two groups according to presence or absence of history of hypertension. Clinical, functional, and inflammatory (airway and systemic) data were collected. Data on two hundred and sixty asthmatic patients were analyzed. Seventy-nine (30.4%) of them had a diagnosis of hypertension requiring a specific pharmacological treatment. Asthmatics with hypertension were more frequently male ( = 0.047), older (