Development of the LAQ-6: a questionnaire for assessing long-term asthma control

Area of Science:

• Pulmonary Medicine
• Clinical Assessment Tools
• Asthma Management

Background:

• Current asthma questionnaires have short recall periods, limiting assessment of long-term symptom burden.
• A need exists for brief instruments to evaluate longer-term asthma control for risk stratification and remission-oriented care.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate the 6-item Long-term Asthma Control Questionnaire (LAQ-6) with a 3-month recall period.
• To assess the LAQ-6's performance in identifying Asthma Control Test (ACT)-defined well-controlled asthma.

Main Methods:

• Ninety adult asthma patients completed the LAQ-6 and ACT.
• Correlation analyses and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to evaluate LAQ-6 performance against ACT scores and 6-month exacerbation/emergency visit data.

Main Results:

• The LAQ-6 showed strong correlation with the ACT (r=0.79) and asthma quality of life (rho=0.763).
• It demonstrated high accuracy (AUC=0.83) in identifying ACT-defined well-controlled asthma (ACT ≥20).
• LAQ-6 outperformed ACT in predicting 6-month exacerbations (AUC=0.866 vs. 0.816) and emergency visits (AUC=0.857 vs. 0.676).

Conclusions:

• The LAQ-6 is a validated, brief questionnaire for assessing 3-month asthma symptom burden.
• It complements existing tools and may aid in outpatient risk stratification and evaluating clinical remission.