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Bronchial Thermoplasty: A Novel Therapeutic Approach to Severe Asthma
Published on: November 4, 2010
Molecular phenotyping for severe asthma
Patricia Noel1, Weiniu Gan1, James Kiley1
1Division of Lung Diseases, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institute of Health, US Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. kileyj@nhlbi.nih.gov.
Abstract:
Evaluation of: Brasier AR, Sundar V, Boetticher G et al.: Molecular phenotyping of severe asthma using pattern recognition of bronchoalveolar lavage-derived cytokines. J. Allergy Clin. Immunol. 121, 30-37 (2008). Asthma is a heterogeneous disorder presenting with many phenotypes. Precise phenotypic definition has eluded the medical research community for years, despite recognition of different disease subtypes. Brasier and colleagues sought to discriminate asthma phenotypes on the basis of cytokine profiles in bronchoalveolar lavage samples from 84 patients with mild-moderate and severe asthma. Their results demonstrated that this molecular phenotyping approach could be applied to categorizing asthma into subtypes based on pathobiology. This article will discuss the potential advantages of applying molecular phenotyping approaches to asthma and lung disease in general in the perspective of personalized medicine.
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