What is it about?
A clinical study led by Oxford (United Kingdom) and Pisa (Italy) Universities quantifies the differences in the expression levels of multiple sputum inflammatory molecules between different subpopulations of asthmatic patients, previously labelled on the basis of their sputum differential cell count as affected by eosinophilic, neutrophilic, mixed, or paucigranulocytic asthma.
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Why is it important?
Bronchial asthma is a chronic airway disease affecting more than three hundred million patients worldwide. Given the high prevalence of this disease and the social and economic burden resulting from under- or mistreatment, the optimal management of this condition represents therefore a key goal. In order to investigate the pathophysiological heterogeneity of this disease, a rather new trend in the Literature suggests categorising different asthmatic patient subpopulations on the basis of their specific molecular patterns, which are supposed to represent the key pathological determinant leading to one particular group of symptoms and signs – i.e. a phenotype – rather than another one. Therefore, asthma endotypes are the key for understanding and treating asthmatic patients with a precision medicine approach.
Perspectives
These pathophysiologic differences might be used in a compact, multi-cytokine assessment test that defines univocally the specific patient’s inflammatory pattern from a single sample of induced sputum. Such results shed light on the multifaceted inflammatory environment in bronchial asthma and might promote further research in order to define new targeted therapy strategies for those patients with difficult-to-treat asthma.
Matteo Bradicich
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: 5th International Workshop on Lung Health – Rising Stars Abstracts, COPD Journal of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, March 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/15412555.2018.1473080.
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