The following is a summary of “Development of an asthma health-care burden score as a measure of severity and predictor of remission in SARP III and U-BIOPRED: results from two major longitudinal asthma cohorts,” published in the January 2025 issue of Pulmonology by Zein et al.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to create a new method for assessing asthma severity using asthma health-care burden data.
They analyzed data from the Severe Asthma Research Program III (SARP III; USA) and the European Unbiased Biomarkers for the Prediction of Respiratory Disease Outcomes (U-BIOPRED; 11 European countries) to create a composite burden score. This score was based on asthma exacerbations and health-care utilization and modified to include short-acting beta agonists (SABAs) use to account for asthma symptom burden.
The results showed that in SARP III, 528 adults with asthma were followed for an average of 4.4 (SD 1.6) years, with 312 (59%) having severe asthma. Among 205 participants with asthma who used rescue SABAs daily, 90 used them more than twice daily. In U-BIOPRED, 509 adults were followed for 1 year, with 421 (83%) having severe asthma. A burden score below 1.29 per patient-year was found in 106 (34%) of 312 participants of SARP III and in 80 (19%) of 421 U-BIOPRED participants with severe asthma. In contrast, the burden score exceeded the median in 58 (28%) of SARP III and 24 (27%) of U-BIOPRED participants with non-severe asthma. In both cohorts, the burden score negatively correlated with lung function, asthma control, and QoL. A burden score ≤0.15 predicted asthma remission with sensitivity >91% and specificity of 99%.
Investigators concluded the burden score, incorporating patient-centred data, better reflected asthma severity and remission compared to current definitions, with potential to optimize management for high-risk individuals, pending prospective validation.
Source: thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(24)00250-9/abstract
