Bronchial hyperresponsiveness in Sjögren’s syndrome — relationship between extraglandular manifestation

Our objective was to appraise bronchial hyperresponsiveness in Sjögren’s syndrome (SS) and to analyze the clinical aspects of those patients. Forty-five patients with primary and secondary SS underwent examination with chest X-ray, spirometry and directly writing of the dose-response curve of respiratory resistance (R_rs) during the continuous inhalation of methacholine in stepwise incremental concentrations (astograph). Thirty-one patients (68.9%) had bronchial hyperresponsiveness. Ten out of 12 (83.3%) patients with extraglandular involvement had bronchial hyperresponsiveness. The threshold of the increase of R_rs in SS patients was significantly higher than bronchial asthma. This paper shows that some patients with SS have bronchial hyperresponsiveness; especially in patients with extraglandular involvement, it occurs at a high incidence. In addition, the pattern of the dose-response curve with bronchial hyperresponsiveness in SS was similar to that of chronic bronchitis rather than bronchial asthma in the methacholine inhalation test.