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Clinical factors impact likelihood of ICS responsiveness

Patients study were more likely to respond to inhaled corticosteroids if they adhered to medication, responded to bronchodilator treatment and had good baseline lung function and asthma control, according to recent research.

“In identifying subjects most likely to benefit from treatment, our study suggested that arguably more mundane factors, such as medication adherence, level of bronchodilator responsiveness, baseline lung function, and patient-reported asthma control, were consistently predictive of ICS response,” Karen E. Wells, MPH, researcher with the department of public health sciences at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, and colleagues wrote in their study. “Therefore although pharmacogenomics might eventually pave the way for more targeted asthma treatment, fundamental characteristics of disease severity/control and management remain primary concerns for selecting and optimizing treatment.”

Wells and colleagues evaluated 339 participants in the Study of Asthma Phenotypes and Pharmacogenomic Interactions by Race-ethnicity (SAPPHIRE) and their response to beclomethasone dipropionate over 6 weeks, according to the abstract. Participants were 12 years to 56 years old with 12% bronchodilator reversibility and between 40% and 90% predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1). Of these participants, 242 participants (71.4%) were African American and 97 participants (28.6%) were European American.

The researchers found that factors such as baseline Asthma Control Test, adherence to inhaled corticosteroids, percent of predicted FEV₁ and bronchodilator response were significantly associated with the participants’ response to inhaled corticosteroids, according to the abstract. Wells and colleagues noted that participants with baseline ACT scores lower than 19 were less likely to respond to ICS due to the dose-response relationship. There was no significant association with self-reported ethnicity or proportion of African ancestry among patients and response to ICS. – by Jeff Craven

Disclosure: Peterson received grants from the National Institutes of Health. The other researchers report various financial disclosures. Please see the full study for a complete list of disclosures.