A team of researchers from University Hospital Southampton, University of Southampton and Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust presented a poster at the European Respiratory Society Conference in Munich in September 2014.
The research is part of the on-going analysis from the Wessex Severe Asthma Cohort study with data from 126 healthy non-asthmatic controls, 93 mild asthmatics, 35 moderate asthmatics and 276 severe treatment-resistant asthmatics being analysed for a bio-marker called periostin. Bio-markers are substances that can be measured in blood or body fluids that may give researchers and doctors more information on a medical condition. Periostin is a potential new bio-marker that is being investigated for severe asthma.
In this research the levels of periostin were found to be significantly lower in patients who were treated with steroids (moderate and severe asthma groups). In patients with severe asthma the spread of periostin levels was very large but patients who had the highest levels of periostin were found to have uncontrolled inflammation in the lungs and reduced lung function.
The results of this study show periostin is a potentially useful bio-marker for inflammation in the lungs and severity of disease but further investigation is needed. The researchers hope that measuring periostin as a bio-marker will guide the selection of patients for novel asthma treatments in the future. Download the full poster here.
