Reducing Tolerance for SABA and OCS towards the Extreme Ends of Asthma Severity

Stepwise Approach in Asthma Revisited 2023: Expert Panel Opinion of Turkish Guideline of Asthma Diagnosis and Management Group

Introduction of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) has been the cornerstone of the long-term management of asthma. ICSs either alone or in combination with long-acting beta-2 agonists have been shown to be associated with favorable asthma outcomes. However, asthma control is still reported to be below expectations all around the world. Research in the last decades focusing on the use of ICS/formoterol both as maintenance and as needed (maintenance and reliever therapy approach) showed improved asthma outcomes. As a result of recent developments, Turkish Asthma Guidelines group aimed to revise asthma treatment recommendations. In general, we recommend physicians to consider the risk factors for poor asthma outcomes, patients' compliance and expectations and then to determine "a personalized treatment plan." Importantly, the use of short-acting beta-2 agonists alone as a symptom reliever in asthma patients not using regular ICS is no longer recommended. In stepwise treatment approach, we primarily recommend to use ICS-based controllers and initiate ICS as soon as possible. We define 2 different treatment tracks in stepwise approaches as maintenance and reliever therapy or fixed-dose therapy and equally recommend each track depending on the patient's risks as well as decision of physicians in a personalized manner. For both tracks, a strong recommendation was made in favor of using add-on treatments before initiating phenotype-specific treatment in step 5. A strong recommendation was also made in favor of using biologic agents and/or aspirin treatment after desensitization in severe asthma when indicated.

Unanswered questions on the use of biologics in pediatric asthma

The emergence of biologic therapies for the management of asthma has been a revolutionary change in our capacity to manage this disease. Since the launch of omalizumab, several other biologics have been marketed or are close to being marketed, suggesting that a plethora of monoclonal antibodies can be expected in the coming years. This will facilitate the transition to the paradigm of personalized medicine, but on the other hand will decisively further complicate the choice of the most appropriate treatment, in the absence of reliable enough biological markers. For these reasons, along with the relatively short time of use with these treatments, there are recurrently arising questions for which there are not even moderately documented answers, and for which the only solution must be based, with all reservations, on the combination of indirect evidence and expertise. In this paper, we attempt to address such questions, providing relevant commentaries and considering the whole width of the evidence base.

Asthma: From Phenotypes to Personalized Medicine

Asthma is a heterogeneous disease of the airways with a high prevalence worldwide characterized by chronic inflammation [...].