Limitations
asthma, COPD
COPD, DISEASE, ASTHMA
Due to the complex design and long duration of the study we were only aiming to include 10 participants. Naturally we used BAL to analyse the effects of segmental LPS challenge. Due to ethical reasons, we restricted the analysis of the inhalation challenge to ISP, which due to its more central origin is not directly comparable to BAL. Therefore, our data interpretation remains speculative in some aspects and generates hypothesis which would need to be proven in different study designs. The LPS induced changes were not large in the healthy subjects. This might have been different in asthma or COPD patients, however, due to the variability in disease status between patients and over time, such a study would have required a much larger group of subjects.