Asthma and COPD have different aetiologies, symptoms, type of airway inflammation, inflammatory cells, mediators, consequences of inflammation, response to therapy, and course (Table 1). In clinical practice, in patients presenting with airway obstruction, it is often difficult to decide whether the obstruction is caused by asthma or COPD.1
The real issue is that both asthma and COPD are not single disease entities, but rather syndromes consisting of several endotypes and phenotypes leading to a spectrum of different and overlapping conditions....
