Mel, these are great articles. Thanks for posting them. I had some pulmonary testing done a couple of years ago because I had the steel band effect happening around my ribcage. The results (other than I had about 4 more allergies than I did 12 years ago) were that my body is not absorbing the oxygen properly, so I don't have enough in my bloodstream. The 'solution' was Nasonex - a nasal spray steroid. Other than the fact that I feared becoming another Felix Unger (he of the sinus clearing morning honks and constant nasal spray use), the steroids gave me headaches. I stopped using it.
Anyway, not saying that has anything to do with AS & Lung Disease, except I'm wondering how many of us have been told our bodies don't absorb the oxygen efficiently or some other seemingly mild and unrelated pulmonary thing.
I thought I'd add these articles to the lexicon on lung disease:
PubMed PubMed Again Oxford Journals Annals of Rheumatic Diseases 10 pages of articles came up when I searched. These are from the first page. Seems there's been a fair bit of research done on this, but of course, unless it occurs we would never even know it's a risk. I guess we can't know everything.
Many hugs,
