Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Asthma is an inflammatory disease of the airways that affects over 300 million people worldwide. It is associated with variable airflow obstruction that results in respiratory symptoms such as wheezing, coughing, breathlessness, and chest tightness. These symptoms are typically intermittent and reversible but often vary in their intensity over time. A major target of asthma management is to achieve and maintain stable symptom control. However, the concept of 'stability' in symptom control is not well studied. We define stability as the likelihood of a change in symptom control over time. We found that the tendency to remain in a given control level over a one-year follow-up period varied significantly among the 431 adult asthma patients in our study. This variation in stability was not well explained by the clinical characteristics, sociodemographic factors or environmental exposure history of patients. However, a patient's previous history of symptom control stability was a good indicator of current stability. This suggests that stability is an innate feature, and that certain individuals have a high likelihood of changing control status regardless of their treatment intensity or exposure to certain environmental triggers. These patients can be identified based on their previous history of symptom control and may require closer follow-up and higher levels of maintenance treatment.