الفهرس 
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Abstract
This study was conducted on eighty (80) subjects, 50 of them were asthmatic patients and 30 were normal healthy subjects who attended to outpatient clinic at chest department and internal medicine department of El-Minia University Hospital.
All subjects were females of different ages (18-60 years) and subjected to the following: thorough history taking, full examination (General & local chest-exam), pulmonary function tests to assess the asthmatic status, skin prick test to divide the asthmatic patients to allergic and non-allergic ones and investigation (CBC, thyroid function, serum level of IgE, Anti TPO Ab and serum level of anti-CK18 Ab).
We studied the autoimmune phenomenon of bronchial asthma and the relation of bronchial asthma to thyroid dysfunction.
The results showed that asthmatic patients were divided to 25 allergic (+ve skin prick test and 25 non allergic (-ve skin prick test) and statistically significant elevation of serum total IgE in allergic patients than non-allergic patients.
The results also showed that Anti-TPO antibodies serum level in bronchial asthma patients was statistically higher than in healthy subjects but no significant association was found between thyroid function disorders and bronchial asthma as thyroid hormones still within the reference ranges.
The association between anti-TPO antibodies and bronchial asthma found in the present study may show abnormal immunologic reasons and presence of hidden autoimmune thyroiditis in these patients, but this autoimmunity had no effect on serum level of thyroid hormones.
Anti-CK18 antibodies serum level in bronchial asthma patients was statistically higher than in healthy subjects and higher in non-allergic asthma than in allergic asthma.
The identification of anti-CK18 antibodies as a bronchial epithelial auto-antigen associated with non-allergic asthma might provide a clue to exploring the autoimmune hypothesis in the pathogenesis of non-allergic asthma or it could be just a reflection of epithelial damage in patients with asthma.