Active clinical trials for "Asthma"

Asthma is a common illness among children in the United States. While there are many known causes of asthma, including tobacco smoke, pollen, dust, or other allergens, the exact cause of asthma in some individuals remains unknown. This study will examine the role that specific dietary factors and body mass index (BMI) play in the development of childhood asthma.

The aim of the study is to assess the peripheral endothelial function in adult asthmatic patients and the relationship between the peripheral endothelial function and the pulmonary function.

Investigate differences in practice patterns in providers who may care for pregnant women with asthma exacerbations. The investigators believe that practitioners of different specialties will practice differently.

The primary aim of this study was to compare the absolute and relative effectiveness of asthma management in paediatric patients in the UK on inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) maintenance therapy as extra-fine HFA-BDP (Qvar®) pressurised metered dose inhaler (pMDI) compared with fluticasone propionate (FP) pMDI.

To examine whether a breathing test (methacholine challenge using impulse oscillometry) can be used to tell the difference between two different doses of an inhaled drug, salmeterol, delivered by Advair in children with asthma

Asthma is a disease that affects more than 12% of Americans under the age of 18 for over 14 million missed school days per year, and is the number one cause of school absences in America. Elementary school children spend 6 to 10 hours a day in school, and most of that time is spent in one classroom. The goals of this project are to provide an understanding of exposure risk factors specific to the classroom. This is critical, because the classroom environment could potentially be considered as an effective target for prevention of inner-city asthma morbidity by reducing exposures to many symptomatic children through an intervention in the school classrooms.

Non-invasive inert gas rebreathing (IGR) based on the Fick Principle showed promising results in the determination of pulmonary blood flow (PBF). The volume of the rebreathing bag (Vbag) is proposed by the system, however, elderly patients or those suffering from high grade pulmonary diseases might be unable to entirely rebreathe this volume and therefore fail to completely mix the test gases. The aim of our study is to evaluate the effect of adapting Vbag on the reproducibility of IGR measurements in patients with obstruction (group A), restriction (group B) and pulmonary healthy controls (group C).

The aim of this study is to investigate the mechanisms of interplay between allergy (IgE and Th2 mediated inflammation) and virus infection in the development of asthma, as well as the risk and severity of acute exacerbations of asthma. Understanding these mechanisms should identify new approaches for novel therapies for the prevention of asthma development and for prevention/treatment of asthma exacerbations. Such treatment has potential to have a major impact on patient quality of life and to result in enormous reductions in health care costs. A human model will be used to identify dysregulated genes/proteins and determine relationships with disease outcomes. This study will compare lower airway responses between asthmatic and healthy control subjects undergoing rhinovirus (RV) experimental infection (subjects will be infected with rhinovirus as part of the study). This will have the dual advantage of investigating mechanisms in the most natural model possible, as well as developing a better model for testing novel therapeutic approaches. The investigators will analyse the samples from both subject groups, to determine their relevance to the human disease. Any genes/proteins shown to be dysregulated and related to disease outcomes in the human model will be very strong candidates for immediate translation into human intervention studies. Up to 12 asthmatic and/or healthy subjects will be recruited for a preliminary pilot study. These subjects will be ineligible to enter the main study due to the presence of neutralizing antibody to RV16 (~50% of subjects otherwise suitable for the study). These subjects will meet all other inclusion/exclusion criteria for the main study. The 12 participants will undergo tests including a single bronchoscopy, nasal sampling and blood tests allowing for optimisation of all sample processing techniques. They will not be infected with RV-16. In the main study the investigators will aim to study up to 15 healthy volunteers and 15 volunteers with moderate asthma (all on inhaled steroid treatment). Subjects will undergo a single baseline bronchoscopy 2 weeks prior to inoculation with the RV16 virus. Following infection with the virus participants will be required to attend for regular sample collection including 2 further bronchoscopies post-infection. Patients will be followed until convalescence 6 weeks post infection.

The investigators propose to implement and evaluate an integrated care program for enhancing the care of patients with asthma in a region of Quebec province, Canada. The investigators will implement our intervention in a family medicine group practice setting and plan to deliver it to 150 experimental group subjects. The investigators will simultaneously study 300 control subjects who are receiving usual care in other regions of the province of Quebec. Our hypothesis is that the program will improve the quality of life of patients with asthma exposed to the program, asthma control, inhaled corticosteroid adherence, knowledge of asthma, and a number of variables that relate to the conceptual model selected as a framework for this study (the PRECEDE-PROCEED model of Green and Kreuter).

The main objective of the trial is to explore if any of the biomarkers assessed are sensitively linked to the asthma phenotypes. This would potentially alone or in addition to other clinical or biofluid markers indicate if and how asthma endotypes are linked to phenotype such as eosinophilic, neutrophilic, or paucigranulocytic phenotypes. Further exploratory markers will be analysed for better understanding of physiological levels of proteins and markers playing a role in regard to disease characterization in asthma. As a basis for further development of a biomarker for asthma, The sponsor plans to conduct this exploratory biomarker trial to determine levels and reference ranges of biomarkers potentially associated with asthma phenotypes. The trial aims at generating a panel of serum biomarkers that can be evaluated in subsequent interventional studies. The longitudinal design will be used to ascertain stability and test-retest reliability.