Exercise-Induced Nasal Obstruction in Patients with Allergic Rhinitis

Abstract

Exercise-induced nasal obstruction was studied in 90 patients with allergic rhinitis and 26 normal subjects. Allergic patients as well as normal subjects showed marked decreases of nasal resistance immediately after exercise. In allergic patients, however, the total nasal resistance returned to the pre-exercise level quickly after exercise and surpassed it. Meanwhile, the total nasal resistance gradually returned to the pre-exercise level in the post-exercise period in normal subjects. The profile of the total nasal resistance changes in the allergic patients was statistically different from that in the normal subjects. As far as unilateral nasal resistance is concerned, marked increases of nasal resistance appeared 10–30 minutes after exercise in 20 of 90 allergic patients. On the contrary, this phenomenon was not found in any normal subject. This unilateral nasal obstruction, which appeared only in allergic patients, is probably due to excessive dilatation of the capacitance vessels in the nasal mucosa and considered to appear as an enhancement of the nasal cycle. In this paper, the role of the nasal cycle is discussed in relation to exercise-induced nasal obstruction.