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Updated: Jul 17, 2025
Author Spotlight: Evaluating the Therapeutic Efficacy of Moving Cupping Along Meridians for Acute Exacerbation of COPD
Published on: September 27, 2024
Exacerbation rates in Japanese patients with obstructive lung disease: A subanalysis of the prospective,
Tomotaka Kawayama1, Kenichi Takahashi2, Toshikazu Ikeda3
1Division of Respirology, Neurology, and Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, Kurume University School of Medicine, Kurume, Japan.
Background:
Although clinical trials including asthma and COPD patients have revealed much about exacerbation frequencies, most studies are limited in that they recruited patients only with a clear diagnosis of one disease or the other, based on conventional diagnostic criteria, which may exclude many real-world patients with mixed symptoms.
Methods:
NOVELTY is a global prospective observational study of patients with asthma and/or COPD from real-world practice. In this subanalysis, we compared patient characteristics of obstructive pulmonary diseases between the Japanese population (n = 820) and the overall population excluding Japanese patients (n = 10,406).
Results:
The Japanese population had fewer exacerbations than the overall population across most of the physician-assessed disease severities and all diagnoses. The difference in exacerbation frequencies was more prominent in patients with COPD and asthma + COPD. The Japanese population was older, had higher former smoking rates, lower BMI, fewer respiratory symptoms, and better health-related quality of life compared with the overall population across all diagnoses.
Conclusions:
We clarified differences in patient characteristics among patients with asthma and/or COPD in Japan compared with non-Japanese patients. Importantly, we found that Japanese patients with asthma and/or COPD had significantly fewer exacerbations compared with patients overall. The results from our study may contribute to the development of precision medicine and guidelines specific to Japan.
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