Response to letter by Popov, Todor regarding our paper: Exhaled breath temperature measurement and asthma control in children prescribed inhaled corticosteroids: A cross sectional study

Abstract

Response to Letter by Popov, Todor Regarding Our Paper: Exhaled Breath Temperature Measurement and Asthma Control in Children Prescribed Inhaled Corticosteroids: A Cross Sectional StudyWe are pleased that the authors describe our paper as providing a well written in depth analysis of factors relating to EBT. We also acknowledge their leading expertise in the measurement of EBT in asthma.With respect to the relationship between EBT and age we found a weak correlation with both age (R ¼ 0.33) and with lung volume. We note that Popov et al. in their published abstract also found a weak or at best modest correlation between age and EBT (R ¼ 0.43). Given that the purpose of both studies related to EBT in asthma and the low percentage variation (R 2 , 11%) that age explained for EBT suggests that this is unlikely to play a major role in why we didn't seen a better or closer association between EBT and measures of asthma control. When we were shortening the Discussion section of our paper we removed a more detailed discussion regarding the abstract quoted in Reference 17 or our article and do agree that a fairer comparison would have been to have described the much weaker age comparison with EBT with an R value of 0.43.We are delighted to hear that the manufacturers have been able to produce a handheld EBT monitor that can measure EBT within 10 breaths. This will make for a much more child friendly monitor which we hope will be accurate and repeatable. We would look forward to the opportunity of testing this as an objective assessment tool for monitoring children's asthma at the clinic.In our article we were very careful to highlight that our study was cross sectional and did not describe a serial study measuring change within asthmatic patients.