Experts urge rethink of ’outdated’ asthma categorisation

A group of respiratory medicine experts have called for an overhaul in our thinking about how asthma and other airways diseases are categorised and treated, saying the current approach is outdated and does not reflect advances in treating these conditions. Outlining their views in a specially commissioned article in The Lancet , the 23 international asthma experts - co-chaired by University of Oxford Professor of Respiratory Medicine Ian Pavord, and Andy Bush, Professor of Paediatric Respirology at Imperial College London - say that progress in treating asthma has slowed in the past 10 years despite increased spending on treatments, and has not matched that enjoyed in other medical fields. 'We believe that the most important cause of this stagnation is a continued reliance on outdated and unhelpful disease labels, treatment and research frameworks, and monitoring strategies, which have reached the stage of unchallenged veneration and have subsequently stifled new thinking,' the experts in the Lancet Commission say. Asthma is responsible for considerable global morbidity and health-care costs. A study by Asthma UK last year found that asthma costs the UK health service at least £1.1 billion each year, and that more than 270 people are admitted to hospital each day because of asthma attacks. Prof Pavord leads the Respiratory Theme of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), based at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Oxford.