Active clinical trials for "Asthma"

The aim of this non-interventional study is to ensure that patients in routine clinical practice follow given treatment instructions and to evaluate the number of reliever inhalations as well as the number of patient/days with more than 8/12 total inhalations at any day. If the number of reliever inhalations and thus the received inhaled glucocorticosteroid dose is not excessive, the safety conclusions from the clinical studies can be extrapolated to real life for better acceptance of SMART (Symbicort Maintenance and Reliever Therapy).

The purpose of this study is to determine if a simple blood test can help in disease management, particularly asthma. This will be researched by looking at certain features of the blood and to compare asthmatics without allergies to those that have allergy-induced asthma.

An analysis of the costs and outcomes associated with hospitalization and treatment of Levalbuterol versus Racemic Albuterol in subjects with Asthma and COPD.

Asthma is a major public health problem among Puerto Ricans. Little is known, however, about the effect of heredity and environment on the development and severity of asthma in this population. This study will examine the relationship between asthma and certain genetic and environmental factors in Puerto Rican children.

The purpose of the study is to assess if a dialog tool can improve compliance and asthma control in patients with asthma.

This study will examine if depression in a primary caregiver is associated with more hospitalization or ER visits in children with asthma. This study will also explore whether treatment for depression in the primary caregivers is associated with improvement in asthma in school-aged children. Asthma is a very common childhood disorder of airway inflammation. The causes include environmental irritants, cold temperature, and infection in the respiratory tract, and emotional factors can contribute to symptom exacerbation. However, asthma is a disease that can be well controlled if there is proper medication compliance and careful control of environmental conditions. Data suggests that psychiatric symptoms in the mothers of children with asthma are associated with more asthma related hospitalizations in children. Thus, we want to explore this question further using more specific diagnostic instruments in order to detect what types of symptoms are associated with increased asthma related service utilization. Also, we want to explore if effective treatment of the caregivers' symptoms is associated with decreased hospitalization and emergency room visits for the child.

To examine air pollution, inflammation and new onset asthma in a large cohort of children in southern California.

To address the problems of disparities in asthma care and morbidity by examining the influence of environmental/genetic factors and stress on the development of asthma.

To reduce disparities in asthma among Latino children.

The aim of this study is to examine the inflammatory mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of inflammatory lung disease, in particular to compare the inflammatory profile seen in asthma and COPD. Evidence for inflammation in asthma and COPD is based on the finding of increased numbers of macrophages and neutrophils in the lungs and respiratory secretions of these patients. The inflammatory cells produce proteases, as well as, reactive oxidant species resulting in a protease/anti-protease imbalance which favours lung destruction. The aim is to examine the inflammatory mediators released by inflammatory cells (such as, macrophages and lymphocytes) in order to determine whether there are differences between non-smoking subjects, smoking subjects and patients with asthma or COPD. Monocytes are precursors of alveolar macrophages, and both monocytes and neutrophils are recruited to the lung from the blood via the action of specific chemoattractants. We have evidence that in inflammation there are higher levels of these chemoattractants. Therefore these cells might also demonstrate the same changes seen in alveolar macrophages from these patients. We also aim to assess the role of the macrophage precursor (monocyte) and neutrophils in the blood. We will also assess lymphocyte/monocyte interaction. We will do this as the lymphocyte may be involved in the initial recruitment of inflammatory cells. We will also assess the role of cytokines involved with monocyte/macrophage/neutrophil migration in induced sputum as well as the role of induced sputum in the migration of monocytes and neutrophils into the lung. Our aim is to link the initial changes in blood to the changes causing disease in the lungs. We aim to examine cellular responses in four groups of subjects, namely (i) non-smoking controls, (ii) smokers without clinical evidence of COPD or asthma, (iii) smokers with COPD (iv) asthmatic patients.