View clinical trials related to Asthma.
Filter by:This study will be conducted to evaluate the effects of an educational asthma program on the frequency of emergency department visits and identifying factors associated with frequent emergency department visits by asthmatic children and determine its effect on asthma severity and quality of life among asthmatic children and their caregivers.
The purpose of study is to provide an objective data for evaluating the efficacy and safety of Chinese medicine (CM) formula combined with inhaled corticosteroid in the treatment of asthmatic children. Investigators will recruit eighty-six mild to moderate asthmatic children aged 4-11 years old with regular ICS usage and they will be randomized into two groups in this double-blind trial. Forty-three subjects will receive CM (CM group; Ma-Hsing-Kan-Shih-Tang in combination with Liu-Jun-Zi-Tang) and the other forty-three subjects will receive placebo (placebo group; 10% CM) for 12 weeks. Investigators will compare these two groups by questionnaires of Childhood Asthma Control Test (cACT), the Integrated Therapeutics Group Child Asthma Short Form (ITG-CASF), Pediatric Asthma Caregiver's Quality of Life Questionnaire (PACQLQ), the pulmonary function test and blood test including Complete Blood Count with Differential Count (CBC/DC), total IgE, Eosinophil Cationic Protein (ECP) and IL-4/IL-5/IL-13. Adverse events, renal and liver function test will be evaluated to investigate the safety of CM formula as well.
The COVID19 pandemic is having an immeasurable impact on the economy and on morbidity and mortality. Knowledge and scientific evidence about this disease is advancing rapidly, but it is not yet known whether asthmatic patients suffering from COVID19 have an exacerbation of asthma, or whether this viral infection has an impact on control and lung function in the short to medium term. The aim of this study is to define the changes that occur in these two parameters in asthmatic patients suffering from COVID19. To this end, asthmatic patients who have suffered a SARS-CoV-2 infection and who have required an emergency consultation or hospitalisation will be collected in a pneumology consultation and matched by age, sex and severity of asthma with a group that has not suffered the same. Both will be followed for one year, and lung function will be tested at six months and exacerbations and changes in ACT during the following year. These data are intended to improve the available knowledge on the impact of IDVC19 on asthma patients with a view to making appropriate recommendations, prevention and treatment adjustments in line with the results obtained.
Patients with severe or difficult-to-treat asthma represent a small amount of total asthmatic patients, but weight on the national health system for the costs of disease management. Chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis, which the Italian severe/uncontrolled asthma registry reported with a prevalence of 30%, represents a comorbidity that significantly impact lung function and asthma control in severe asthma. Recent evidence indicates that there is a consistent heterogeneity regarding mucosal alterations present in subjects with nasal polyposis involving different pathways: inflammatory cells, remodeling, T cell activation, local IgE production, alteration induced by interactions between microorganisms and epithelial cells.
The goal of this study is to evaluate the implementation of the Coach McLungsSM shared decision making (SDM) intervention into primary care across a large healthcare system. Coach McLungsSM is a virtual evidence-based asthma intervention with built-in asthma education and clinical decision support. All asthma patients aged 5-17 who attend these practices will be assessed for uncontrolled asthma. Asthma exacerbations attributed to emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and oral steroid use, will be evaluated to serve as surrogate measures for patient-centered asthma outcomes.
The bulk of the morbidity and mortality related to asthma is during periods of acutely increased symptomatology called 'exacerbations'. Roughly half of asthma sufferers experience such an exacerbation each year. Most of these events are triggered by viral infections, usually the common cold virus (rhinovirus). A key part of the body's defence against viral infections is to produce antiviral proteins called 'interferons', which have a myriad of effects to stop viruses. Previous work on cells taken from volunteers with asthma and healthy controls and infected with rhinovirus in the lab suggests interferon production is impaired in asthma. However when human volunteers with asthma are infected with rhinovirus, high levels of interferon are found a few days later - along with high numbers of virus. Whether the high virus numbers are the result of an initially weak interferon response, with subsequently unchecked viral replication leading to exaggerated interferon levels, is unknown as no one has measured interferons early in infection. By infecting volunteers with asthma and healthy controls with rhinovirus at a known time, only done in a handful of centres worldwide, we will be able to measure interferons within hours of infection and well before symptoms develop.
To investigate whether high-dose vitamin D supplementation may have a beneficial effect on secondary prevention in preschool children (1-5 years of age), with respiratory infections being the primary cause of acute exacerbations with asthma-like symptoms.
While the bidirectional relationship between the lung and the right heart are well studied, the cardiopulmonary interactions between the lung and the left heart are largely unresearched and not well understood. However, in recent years, there is a growing evidence that partially explains the bidirectional interaction between COPD and left heart. Systemic inflammation with multiorgan involvement is thought to play a role in COPD as a systemic disease. Some therapeutic approaches to COPD also appear to influence these cardiopulmonary interactions. While understanding these interactions is very important for clinicians, scientific data are scarce. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (cardiac MRI) is the gold standard for assessing cardiac function and dimensions as well as myocardial inflammation. Despite this excellent suitability of cardiac MRI for the assessment of cardiovascular function, only few studies have investigated cardiac function and myocardial structure in patients with pulmonary disease using cardiac MRI. Such a study is therefore very important for understanding the effects of pulmonary disease and its management on the heart. The objective is to determine cardiac function in patients with pulmonary disease and to analyze the cardiovascular effects of the treatment of the pulmonary disease. Specifically, the following will be studied: - Using cardiac MRI: Cardiac function and volumes and indications of myocardial fibrosis and edema in patients with chronic pulmonary disease at the time of first diagnosis. - the vascular function of pulmonary arteries in these patients, also using cardiac MRI - the relationship between pulmonary function parameters and cardiac dysfunction to identify patients at increased risk, if applicable. - Echocardiographic assessment of left heart including strain analysis. - the course of these cardiovascular parameters (using cardiac MRI and echocardiography) 3-6 months after initiation of guideline-based therapy for pulmonary disease.
This study pretends to evaluate the potential use of Hyfe Cough Tracker (Hyfe) to screen for, diagnose, and support the clinical management of patients with respiratory diseases, while enriching a dataset of disease-specific annotated coughs, for further refinement of similar systems.
Rationale Although the majority of asthma patients can be effectively treated with currently available medications, a substantial subset remains severe, causing a considerable proportion of resource expenditure. Severe asthma is now widely accepted to be a heterogeneous syndrome consisting of multiple phenotypes identified by specific biomarkers and targeted by tailored biological therapies. However, much remains unclear regarding the best approaches to manage these patients, or concerning the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying the disease. Small airways (SA) are defined as those airways with an internal diameter <2 mm. In patients affected by asthma, it has been reported that SA are the predominant site of airflow resistance. Peripheral airways are thickened in asthma due to chronic inflammation in the epithelium, submucosa and muscle area. It has been suggested that the outer wall is more inflamed than the inner wall, with a higher number of lymphocytes, eosinophils, and neutrophils associated to an increased mRNA expression of interleukin-4 (IL-4), IL-5 and eotaxin. Moreover, it is well documented that SA inflammation and dysfunction contributes significantly to the clinical impact of asthma and that 50-60% of asthmatics have a SA involvement across all disease severities. An important question is whether SA disease in asthma is variable among distinct asthma phenotypes and whether it occurs in all patients. Cluster analyses have been recently used to identify specific asthma phenotypes, but markers of SA function have not been investigated. However, evidence is accumulating to support the concept that SA dysfunction and inflammation may contribute to distinct asthma phenotypes. Recent findings indicate that SA are significantly affected in severe asthma and that their involvement is associated with worse disease outcomes. It has been reported that patients with asthma and a history of frequent exacerbations per year had a significant SA involvement Furthermore, peripheral airways significantly contribute not only to the level of asthma control, but also to patients' quality of life and perception of symptoms. At last more thickened SA and higher numbers of eosinophils are detectable in subjects with fatal asthma. The assessment of SA represents a big challenge and requires qualified expertise and sophisticated techniques including body plethysmography, single and multiple breath nitrogen washout, impulse oscillometry (IOS), fraction exhaled NO at multiflow, sputum induction and high-resolution chest CT (HRCT). Such procedures can either provide functional information on the degree/extent of ventilation heterogeneity and air trapping or facilitate the understanding of the inflammatory and remodeling processes. These measures are not usually part of the evaluation of asthmatic patients and in the monitoring of the effects of drugs recommended for severe asthma. Mepolizumab represents an innovative weapon for the treatment of severe eosinophilic asthma. In most of these patients the drug controls inflammation, improves lung function, ameliorates clinical symptoms, reduces exacerbations and has a marked steroid-sparing effect. However, there is still a significant proportion of non-responders and a lack of validated predictive biomarkers in such subpopulation. In regard to this, very limited findings are available about the effect of mepolizumab on SA. At the best of our knowledge, the only paper available in literature, addressing the topic, is the study of Farah and co-workers. The authors found that an early improvement in SA function was associated with better asthma control and represented a significant contributor to the therapeutic response. However, the study was conducted in a limited cohort of patients, assessing SA only through multi breath nitrogen washout, and not considering the relationship between SA disease and levels of peripheral/sputum eosinophils. Also, a study was recently initiated at the Hopitaux de Paris to evaluate airway remodelling during mepolizumab treatment (REMOMEPO, NCT03797404). A better definition of severe asthma phenotypes and endotypes, as well as the identification of novel disease targets and biomarkers to predict treatment response and monitor efficacy and safety of biological drugs over time, would favor a Precision Medicine approach translating in both improved disease management and reduced healthcare costs and social burdens. This is considered a crucial unmet need and further research in the field is strongly recommended by international guidelines, respiratory scientific societies, healthcare systems and regulatory boards.