[While severe asthma associated with high morbidity affects a relatively small proportion of all patients with asthma, it requires special attention and innovative treatment approaches. Although asthma is by definition characterized by reversible airflow obstruction, the obstruction becomes fixed to some extent and refractory to corticosteroids with the progression of the disease. The underlying change in this phenotype is airway wall remodelling. In allergic asthmatic patients who remain symptomatic despite highdose inhaled corticosteroid therapy, blockade of IgE with omalizumab confers appreciable clinical benefit. Chronic severe asthma is also accompanied by a marked increase in TNFproduction that might contribute to corticosteroid resistance. In accordance with this, TNF blockade with entanercept has been shown to improve asthma controll and at the same time to reduce bronchial hyperresponsiveness. Identification of new susceptibility genes, such as ADAM33, will provide further targets for therapy, which in turn can result in the development of treatment tools that modify the natural course of asthma and reverse the changes associated with airway remodelling, rather than simply suppress inflammation and dilate the airways.]

[Hungarian professional periodicals started quite late in European context. Their publish­ing, editing and editorial philosophy were equally influenced by specific historical and political situations. Certain breaking points of history resulted in termina­tion of professional journals (War of In­de­pendence 1848-1849, First and Se­cond World Wars), however there were pe­riods, which instigated the progress of sciences and founding of new scientific journals. Both trends were apparent in years after the fall of former Hungarian regime in 1990. The structure of book and journal publishing has changed substantially, some publishers fell “victim” others started successfully as well. The latters include the then-established publishing house Literatura Medica and its own scientific journal, Lege Artis Me­di­cinae (according to its subtitle: New Hun­garian Medical Herald) issued first in 1990. Its appearance enhanced significantly the medical press market. Its scientific publications compete with articles of the well-established domestic medical journals however its philosophy set brand-new trends on the market. Concerning the medical community, it takes on its problems and provides a forum for them. These problems are emerging questions in health care, economy and prevention, in close interrelation with system of public health institutions, infrastructure and situation of those providing individual health services. In all of them, Lege Artis Medicinae follows consequently the ideas of traditional social medicine.]

[This study presents the complete history of the Hungarian vaccine production, partly in association with the process of fighting vaccine-preventable infectious diseases, and underlines the fact that every government actively contributed to the age-adjusted mandatory vaccination schedule of the past 140 years. It demonstrates the various achievements from the smallpox lymph production through the launch of diphtheria serum production at Phylaxia and the establishment of the National Public Health Institute (OKI) with its vaccine production and the later institutional transformation of OKI into Humán as economic corporation to its closure. Among all OKI’s vaccine production activities, this study focuses on the production of influenza vaccines, due to its international importance in the 1960s and 1970s. The vaccine production against diphtheria tetanus and pertussis stands out from Humán’s activities, and the tetanus component of this vaccine is still used in the products of a multinational vaccine manufacturer. ]

[Three decades ago, LAM was launched with the goal of providing scientific information about medicine and its frontiers. From the very beginning, LAM has also concerned a special subject area while connecting medicine with the world of art. In the palette of medical articles, it remained a special feature to this day. The analysis of the history of LAM to date was performed using internationally accepted publication guidelines and scientific databases as a pledge of objectivity. We examined the practice of LAM if it meets the main criteria, the professional expectations of our days, when publishing contents of the traditional printed edition and its electronic version. We explored the visibility of articles in the largest bibliographic and scientific metric databases, and reviewed the LAM's place among the Hun­ga­rian professional journals. Our results show that in recent years LAM has gained international reputation des­pite publishing in Hungarian spoken by a few people. This is due to articles with foreign co-authors as well as references to LAM in articles written exclusively by foreign researchers. The journal is of course full readable in the Hungarian bibliographic databases, and its popularity is among the leading ones. The great virtue of the journal is the wide spectrum of the authors' affiliation, with which they cover almost completely the Hungarian health care institutional sys­tem. The special feature of its columns is enhanced by the publication of writings on art, which may increase Hungarian and foreign interest like that of medical articles.]