Active clinical trials for "Asthma"

Severe eosinophilic asthma (SEA) is associated with poor disease control and compromised health-related quality of life (HRQoL), leading to a substantial psychosocial and economic disease burden. Benralizumab (Fasenra®), an interleukin (IL)-5-alpha receptor monoclonal antibody, is approved as an add-on maintenance treatment for SEA. This study aims at collecting real-world data that extend beyond the clinical effectiveness of benralizumab to the participant-reported impact of treatment on their HRQoL, sleep quality, depression, anxiety, work productivity and activity impairment, but also on treatment effectiveness. Recent technological advances in portable spirometers and wearable activity trackers (WAT) to increase physical activity for participants with asthma, even for older participants, allow this study to collect data on lung function parameters and physical activity from such devices for the first time at a country level in Greece. Using a multi-aspect approach, this study will generate real-world evidence on a broad range of both well-established clinical and novel patient-centered outcomes which are critical to the assessment of the therapeutic benefit both from the physician's and the participant's perspective. All main study outcomes will be examined at various timepoints throughout the course of the 48-week observation period, starting as early as 4 weeks after treatment initiation, thus enabling the identification of 'early' treatment responders with a closer focus on patients' physical and psychological well-being and HRQoL in addition to asthma control and lung function metrics.

This study aims to simulate the deposition of aerosol drugs within the airways of asthma and COPD patients based on realistic breathing patterns measured at different pulmonology centers. Further goal of the study is to find correlations between the amount of drug depositing in the lungs and the measured breathing parameters, as well as disease status and demographic data. The results of the study will be part of a major objective targeting the optimization and personalization of aerosol drug therapy.

The goal of this study is to identify reliable, valid, easily measurable, interpretable, and useful biomarkers in peripheral blood and exhaled air by people with severe asthma for a more accurate description of the pathogenetic processes of asthma-related to the inflammatory endotype and the choice of biologic therapy.

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.

The goal of this research study is to test how good an app is in making asthma easier to manage for 372 adolescents/young adults. The app is a mobile version of the asthma action plan.

This project aims to develop a PROM for preschool children with recurrent wheeze. Nearly one third of children will have at least one episode of wheeze in the first five years of life. The majority of these children grow out of the condition in early school years. However, their families go through challenging times often with numerous emergency department admissions and hospitalizations. Hospital admission rates for preschool children with wheeze attacks remain high and are increasing in the UK. New treatments have become available, but although current treatments speed recovery from a wheeze attack, still many children visit hospitals for rescue medications and medical reviews. Recent Australian data show that one fourth of these children remain at emergency departments for a less than four hours period, suggesting that with better information and education, these children could have remained at home. Justification-Significance of the work By understanding what really matters for these families, clinicians and stakeholders will be better able to design interventions that will reduce the hospital attendances and admissions by empowering parents to manage their children's condition. More specifically, this tool will assist GPs identify which of these children need to be reviewed by specialists, aid holistic management, ensure interventions are meaningful for families and assess the benefits of novel treatments. Methodology The items of the questionnaire have been generated through discussions with families in a qualitative research study conducted by the research team. These items will be refined and the questionnaire will be tested with families in different healthcare settings. Researchers will assess how well this questionnaire is identifying the children who present with greater number of hospital admissions and will be benefited from suggested interventions. The data will be analysed and based on the results, amendments will be made to the questionnaire, which can will then be introduced in the routine management of these children.

Background: - Asthma is a serious clinical and public health problem. Researchers want to collect data to better understand how bacteria and other things in the environment can affect people's asthma. Eligibility: - Nonsmoking adults age 18 - 60 who have moderate to severe asthma. Design: Participants will complete a medical history form before the first visit. Study visits will include collecting medical history, and conducting physical exam, lung and smoking tests. Participants will give blood, urine, stool, dust, saliva, and sputum samples. Participants will take tests that measure their breathing abilities. They will give saliva samples for DNA study. They will get kits to collect stool and dust samples at home. They will fill out surveys. Participants will have visits every 6 months for 5 years. They can schedule sick visits, if needed, at no cost to the participant. For all visits, they will have asthma check-ups and get treatment, at no cost to the participant. Some participants may take part in a sub-study that includes one 4-hour visit. They will have medical history, physical exam, and lung tests. They will have urine tests to check for pregnancy and tobacco exposure. Then they will have bronchoscopy. For this, an intravenous line will be placed in an arm vein. The nose and throat will be numbed. A flexible fiber-optic tube will be inserted into their airways through the nose. Their airways will be examined and areas of their lung will be washed. A small sample of cells will be taken.

This research study is an innovative school-based program for urban children with moderate to severe persistent or difficult-to-control asthma. The Telemedicine Enhanced Asthma Management-Uniting Providers (TEAM-UP) program enhances a school-based, primary care directed asthma program with specialist-supported care to ensure optimal guideline based treatment. This study is a full-scale randomized trial of TEAM-UP versus an enhanced care comparison group. Primary care physicians (PCP) of all enrolled children (n=360, 4-12 yrs.) will be prompted to initiate directly observed therapy (DOT) of preventive asthma medication through school and to make a specialist referral. For children in the TEAM-UP group, the specialist visits will be facilitated via telemedicine at school. The telemedicine specialist visit will be scheduled after 4 weeks of initiating DOT, in order to allow for accurate guideline-based assessments of medication and care needs once adherence with a daily controller medication is established. There will also be 2 telemedicine follow-up specialist visits to assess the child's response to treatment and make needed adjustments. The study will use the existing community infrastructure by implementing both telemedicine and DOT in school, and maintaining collaboration with PCPs. Blinded follow-ups will occur at 3-, 6-, 9- and 12-months after baseline, and the primary outcome is the comparison of symptom-free days (SFD) at each follow-up time point.

Asthma is now widely recognised to be a heterogeneous disease. The last two decades have seen the identification of a number of biological targets and development of various novel therapies. Despite this, asthma still represents a significant health and economic burden worldwide. Why some individuals should continue to suffer remains unclear. The Wessex Asthma Cohort of Difficult Asthma (WATCH) is an ongoing 'real-life', prospective study of patients in the University Hospital Southampton Foundation Trust (UHSFT) Difficult Asthma service. Research data capture is aligned with the extensive clinical characterisation required of a commissioned National Health Service (NHS) Specialist Centre for Severe Asthma. Data acquisition includes detailed clinical, health and disease-related questionnaires, anthropometry, allergy and lung function testing, radiological imaging (in a small subset) and collection of biological samples (blood, urine and sputum). Prospective data are captured in parallel to clinical follow up appointments, with data entered into a bespoke database. The pragmatic ongoing nature of the WATCH study allows comprehensive assessment of the real world clinical spectrum seen in a Specialist Asthma Centre and allows a longitudinal perspective of deeply phenotyped patients. It is anticipated that the WATCH cohort would act as a vehicle for potential collaborative asthma studies and will build upon our understanding of mechanisms underlying difficult asthma.

This is a prospective, observational study to investigate the agreement of the Leo device signal derivation with gold standard asthmatic testing in recently exacerbated asthmatic children. This study is designed for engineering validation of a wireless, wearable device (Leo) for assessing clinical control of children recovering from acute respiratory event such as asthma attack. The Leo device will monitor chest impedance, ECG and body position to calculate parameters such as respiration rate, heart rate, lung volume, tidal breathing flow and volume curves, and body position. These parameters will then be used to train and algorithm to assess clinical control of asthma.