Active clinical trials for "Asthma"

At least half of children with asthma have poor disease control, which can result in complications requiring emergency treatment and hospitalization. As asthma is one of the most common reasons for children to visit emergency departments (ED) and be hospitalized, this disease places a heavy burden on the health care system and families. While there is strong evidence that timely treatment with preventative therapies can substantially improve asthma control, reduce sudden worsening of symptoms, and lower rates of ED visits and hospitalizations, a significant proportion of children do not receive these therapies. The purpose of this study is to improve the prescription and use of evidenced-based preventative therapies for children with asthma with the goal to significantly improve their disease control and quality of life, while reducing unnecessary ED visits and hospitalizations. The investigators will achieve this by: i) installing a primary care clinical pathway for managing childhood asthma into clinicians' electronic medical record (EMR) to facilitate the use of best-evidence by practitioners, and ii) training chronic disease management (CDM) health professionals to provide targeted and timely asthma education to parents and children with asthma. The investigators will test this pathway and education project in a representative sample of 22 Alberta primary care practices, using a pragmatic cluster controlled trial methodology.

The management of chronic conditions is a challenge for health systems worldwide, particularly in the context of an aging population, and requires urgent improvement of health services. Integrated care and patient empowerment represent promising solutions: offering tailored self-management support in a collaborative framework led to good results in several clinical contexts. Yet, large scale implementation remains a challenge. An important limitation of existing solutions is a lack of utilization of behavioural and communication theory for identifying the dynamics of pluridisciplinary collaboration and the interactive effects of the activities performed by several actors involved in self-management support in a given chronic condition. A second limitation is not involving all relevant actors in the development of health service improvement solutions, which leads to limited programme adoption and sustainability in routine care. This study is part of a project that proposes to address these limitations and develop and interdisciplinary model of collaborative care in the self-management of chronic conditions (CoSMaS) that adopts a community-based participative approach. CoSMaS-ql is a qualitative study that will consist of semi-structured interviews with several types of stakeholders: patients, caregivers, and health care professionals of different specialties (e.g. general practitioners, nurses, specialist consultants, pharmacists). The main objective of the study is to explore the experiences and of patients, caregivers, and HCPs on how self-management support is currently delivered in asthma, cancer and stroke (content, communication, organisation of care), their needs related to self-management support provision, and envisaged solutions for improving current practice. Three different chronic conditions will be targeted: asthma, breast cancer and stroke. The qualitative data will be analysed via grounded-theory and template analysis. It will inform the development of a theoretical model of collaborative self-management support in chronic conditions. It will also result in three profiles describing 'real' versus 'ideal' care processes, which will represent needs assessment stages for future health services improvement interventions in the three conditions.

This is a prospective, remote observational study of adults with persistent asthma who are managed on inhaled corticosteroids.

Asthma affects about 10% of children and 6% of adults in industrialized countries. Lymphocytes (L) Th2, a T cell population (LT) producing interleukin (IL) -4, 5 and 13 are broadly involved in this pathology in experimental models and in humans. Many studies show that the signaling pathways activated by the commitment of T receiver differ depending LT. The identification of specific signaling pathways links to Th2 offer new therapeutic approaches. Precedent study showed that mouse Th2 selectively expressed related to calcium channels sensitive channels Cav1 voltage, normally found in excitable cells where they are defined as receivers dihydropyridine (DHP). The goal of the present study is to show the presence of Cav1 channels in inflammatory cells in allergic asthmatics and show overexpression of these channels in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells from asthmatic subjects before and / or after stimulation with the TCR in comparison with controls.

Temperature-controlled Laminar Airflow (TLA) treatment delivered by the Airsonett treatment device is a new treatment for patients with allergic asthma. The LASER Trial (temperature-controlled Laminar Airflow in Severe asthma for Exacerbation Reduction - LASER) is a trial, currently evaluating whether the Airsonett device is able to reduce the frequency of asthma attacks in patients with allergic asthma. (www.lasertrial.co.uk) Participants who successfully complete at least 6 months of follow-up in the LASER trial are eligible for the post trial provision of 4 years of an active TLA treatment device. To date there is no long term performance data available to show whether there is any sustained benefit from the long term use of the Airsonett device, whether any improvement in asthma control or quality of life is maintained and whether patients will continue to use the treatment device beyond 12 months (the length of the longest previous trials of TLA treatment.) The investigators plan to assess the performance of the Airsonett device by recording the frequency of asthma attacks in patients over a 4-year period (48 months.) The investigators also wish to evaluate the effect of long term TLA treatment on asthma control, quality of life, healthcare resource use and patient acceptability of longer term use of the Airsonett device. Participants will be sent and asked to complete a series of questionnaires on a 6 monthly basis over the 48 month study period. Questionnaires will be returned by post to a single study centre based in Portsmouth, UK. Participants will also be contacted by telephone on a 6 monthly basis by a member of the trial team to collect information about their medication, healthcare resource use and whether they have had any asthma attacks since their last contact. Participants will not be expected to visit the study centre during the trial.

The study will assess airway responses in mild atopic asthmatics undergoing repeat allergen challenge testing and will investigate whether ibuprofen changes the response.

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are common lung. Despite the important progresses achieved in treatments, the majority of affected patients suffer from severe symptoms and tend to be frequently hospitalised due to exacerbation. Reasons for uncontrolled asthma and COPD are manifold, but often a poor inhalation technique and a poor following of the prescribed treatment plan is observed, which is called non-adherence. The primary aim of this study will therefore be to measure medication adherence in patients with chronic obstructive lung diseases, and to investigate the impact of an audio reminder on disease outcomes and quality of life. The investigators hypotheses will be that an adherence reminder, improve medication adherence and that a good medication adherence elongate the time to next exacerbation in patients with chronic obstructive lung diseases. A prospective single-blind randomized controlled study is planned, where the investigators are going to analyse the adherence over a period of six months of in- and outpatients, who have experienced at least one exacerbation during the last year. The adherence of intervention- and control group will be measured by specific electronic data capture devices which can save each actuation with date and time. Patients assigned to the intervention group will be reminded for the inhalation by an audio reminder and will receive support calls if medication will not be taken as prescribed or if rescue medication will be used too often. In contrast, the control group, will not be reminded and will not receive any calls, if do not comply with the prescribed medication schedule or if they use their rescue medication too frequently. During study period, participants will be assessed every two months. Each assessment will include spirometry, measurement of diffusion capacity, exhaled nitric oxide and carbon monoxide. Moreover participants will demonstrate their inhalation techniques by using placebo devices and fill out questionnaires regarding quality of life. Statistical significance will be acquired if a p value of less than 0.05 is attained. Time to next exacerbation will be compared using the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazard model. Results will be reported as HR (hazard ratio) with corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI) and p-value. "Time to next exacerbation" is subject to the investigators power calculation. A previous study has shown that 30% of COPD patients are readmitted again within six month because of an exacerbation. The investigators expect that 12% of patients in the intervention group will have an exacerbation. This corresponds to a hazard ratio of 0.36. Assuming a sample size of 70 subjects for each study group, there is a power of 80% to detect a HR of 0.36 based on a one-tailed test. Additional 14 subjects (7 for each study group) have been added to account for drop outs. Therefore, 154 subjects will be investigated in this study.

It is increasingly recognised that asthma is not a single disease but that there are many different phenotypes. Much of the work that we have previously carried out has focussed on differentiating children with difficult asthma (those whose asthma control improves with attention to the basics of asthma management such as adherence) from those with severe therapy resistant asthma (ongoing poor control despite high dose treatment and attention to the basics. Our collaborators in Basel, Switzerland have demonstrated that serial measurements of lung function (peak flow) in adults can characterise the severe asthma phenotype and its stability in adults with asthma. We plan to carry out twice daily peak flow measurement sin children with asthma using an electronic peak flow meter. We will analyse peak flow patterns in children with severe therapy resistant asthma (STRA), difficult asthma (DA) and mild to moderate asthma. We will also investigate the relationship between peak flow variations and symptoms, recorded in a daily diary and medication use, recorded by an electronic measuring device which attaches to the child's own inhaler (Smart-inhaler).

Real-life, observational, retrospective, multicenter study to evaluate the effects of anti-IL5 biological treatments on blood total IgE Levels in atopic patients with severe eosinophilic asthma.

Long-term variability analysis of peak expiratory flow (PEF) and forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) has been successfully used in research to predict the exacerbation of the disease in adult individuals with asthma. However, there is a paucity of data regarding PEF and FEV1 variability in asthmatic children and adolescents. Such a task requires at least daily PEF and FEV1 measurements, recording in diaries, and periodic evaluation of the data. The process may be proven both complicated and time consuming, thus reducing patients' adherence. Recent advances in biosensor technology have permitted the development of reliable, low-cost, portable spirometers, able to connect with smartphones and monitor lung function parameters in real time and from a distance. The objectives of the present study is the assessment of PEF and FEV1 variability: a) in healthy children and adolescents, in order to define the normal daily fluctuation of PEF and FEV1 and the parameters that may influence it, and b) in children and adolescents with asthma, in order to explore the differences from healthy subjects and reveal any specific variability changes prior to exacerbation. Such data would improve our understanding regarding the disease and permit the development of integrated tools for assessing the level of asthma control and the risk of future exacerbations. The study will include 100 healthy children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years for the assessment of normal PEF and FEV1 variability, and 100 children and adolescents of the same age with diagnosed asthma for the assessment of PEF and FEV1 variability in asthmatics. PEF and FEV1 measurements will be performed using an FDA-approved portable spirometer (MIR Spirobank Smart) capable to connect to smartphone. Each participant will receive his personal spirometer. Measurements will be performed twice a day between 07:00-09:00 and 19:00-21:00 hours and dispatched via email to a central database for a period of 3 months. PEF and FEV1 variability will be assessed by detrended fluctuation analysis, aiming to define the normal pattern (healthy controls) and to detect and quantify the deviations (asthmatics). The anticipated duration of the study is 24 months.