Asthma is a complex disorder frequently associated with a poor symptom control, concomitant morbidity, mortality, and significant health care costs due to lack of compliance or inadequate therapeutic options. Interleukin-5 (IL-5) plays a key role in the pathogenesis of eosinophilic disorders, and in the latest years has become a definite target for treatment. Besides asthma, other hypereosinoph...

OBJECTIVE To compare asthma control assessment using the Asthma APGAR system, a tool developed by primary care clinicians, in a multicenter primary care sample with the Asthma Control Test (ACT™)/Childhood Asthma Control Test (CACT™), a tool developed by asthma specialists. PATIENTS AND METHODS This is a substudy of a multicenter, randomized, controlled pragmatic trial that tests the effectiv...

BACKGROUND Poor adherence with inhaled corticosteroids is an important problem in asthma management. Previous approaches to improving adherence have had limited success. AIM To determine whether treatment with a single inhaler containing a long-acting beta(2)-agonist and a corticosteroid for maintenance treatment and symptom relief can overcome the problem of poor adherence with inhaled corti...

BACKGROUND Elevated numbers of circulating fibrocytes are associated with inadequately controlled asthma, poor response to available therapies, and increased risk of adverse outcomes. The lack of reliable and clinically-applicable assays precludes a proper evaluation of blood fibrocyte count as a prognostic biomarker in asthma. This report concerns the use of a multiparameter flow cytometry ass...

Recent studies have demonstrated a high prevalence of non-adherence with anti-inflammatory medication in patients referred for specialist assessment with difficult-to-control asthma. As well as poor asthma outcome and increased healthcare cost, failure to detect non-adherence makes identification of true treatment-resistant/refractory asthma challenging. This is because guideline definitions of...

Severe asthma is defined as either refractory to traditional therapies or controlled only with that have intolerable side effects. Biological agents are known offer treatment alternatives patients type 2 inflammation severe asthma. We describe the case of a woman long history asthma, uncontrolled symptoms and need systemic corticosteroid therapy prevailing features, respiratory failure differen...