View clinical trials related to Severe Persistent Asthma.
Filter by:The purpose of this study is to measure the density of a temperature-sensitive protein, named TRPV1, in the airway mucosa tissue of both non-asthmatic and moderate to severe persistent asthmatic patients. This study may generate information for developing new therapeutic strategy.
The purpose of this research study is to collect lung tissue and fluid from two groups of people: those who have severe asthma, and those who do not. These samples will then be tested in a laboratory to identify differences in the lung tissue cells and fluids that may exist between these two groups of people.
The Canadian Severe Asthma Network (CSAN) was developed to gain a better understanding of the clinical, environmental, socio-economic, work-related, and biological characteristics of severe asthmatics (SA) that may account for poor response to clinically available therapies for asthma. This network of clinical and basic researchers will be a means by which Canadian investigators can develop and conduct research in this small patient group, which could lead to better clinical management of SA. Patient information will be entered into the CSAN database (created by PI Dr. Vethanayagam in connection with Mr. Jack Yeung) and will help researchers and doctors from multiple hospitals and universities across Canada to understand this subpopulation of asthmatics better. It will help to answer questions regarding SA epidemiology, asthma education, inflammatory monitoring, risks of near fatal asthma (NFA), symptom perception, changes in lung structure and function, co-morbidities, and the effectiveness of developing regional severe asthma clinics. Two of the early projects the investigators will be working on are psychosocial co-morbidities in asthma and medication coverage related to asthma. There will also be biobanking of sputum samples and/or bronchoscopy samples (such as BALs & lung washings) that are being obtained for clinical purposes. Also, for those consented for biobanking blood and urine will be collected, separate from clinical care, and stored in the biobank. The Canadian Biosample Repository (CBSR) will be storing our biobanked samples. The investigators will be following the CBSR policies for storage and security. Tissue research will be conducted in the future, and separate ethics approval will be obtained for each project.
This study has two purposes: 1. to determine whether lovastatin, a commonly used medication to lower cholesterol in the blood, can produce beneficial changes in airway inflammation and in the airway smooth muscle 2. to examine whether lovastatin will have favorable changes in asthma symptoms of patients with moderate or severe asthma.