This Tuesday marks World Asthma Day and there are still people dying from this disease in Portugal. For parents with asthmatic children, times are of “panic” with the medicine break, but researchers from Porto have created an “innovative” digital tool for the daily control of asthma.
There is more than 700 thousand asthmatics in Portugal and about a quarter are under the age of 18.
The figures are released on World Asthma Day and the president of the Portuguese Association of Asthmatics (APA), Mário Morais de Almeida, regrets that the number of people with this condition has been increasing in our countryespecially among the younger ones.
“Each year, each month, more and more children are being diagnosed with asthma“, emphasizes Mário Morais de Almeida in statements to Renaissance Radio (RR).
The leader of the APA also recalls that “people still die of asthma in Portugal”, although “in a small percentage”. “In some cases, it still affects young people, there are young adults who die from asthmasomething that shouldn’t happen”, emphasizes Mário Morais de Almeida.
This person in charge regrets that there is a diagnostic problem. “At least half of asthmatics of all age groups are not controlled and this means that they don’t do well during the day, they don’t do well at night”, he notes to RR.
In addition, “there is also a lack of an approach in terms of control”, he says, stressing that it is necessary to treat “asthma avoiding exposure to tobaccoavoiding exposure to allergenspromoting the practice of physical exercisehaving a good diet and then it is also treated with medication, but it is much more than just medication”, he reinforces.
“I’ve been getting calls from panicked parents”
And as for medications, some patients have had difficulties in buying fluticasone inhalers which are used to control childhood asthma.
“For the past two to three weeks, I have been getting daily phone calls from panicked parents“, says to RR the president of the Portuguese Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology (SPAIC), Ana Cristina Morete, referring to the “outages of stocks in pharmacies”.
Ana Cristina Morete notices that “43% of the Portuguese population with asthma the disease is not under control and, in this universe, 88% think it is under control”. And this is another problem associated with the disease.
Furthermore, there are sometimes some confusion between asthma symptoms – shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, tiredness, coughing and wheezing – and other less serious problems.
“There are patients with mild symptoms, who look for doctors and take medication, there are other patients with much more intense symptoms, which do not even give them an impulse to seek medical help”, analyzes the president of SPAIC.
“Then, we also have the opposite: patients who use relief medication for symptoms that, perhaps, are not justified, who have an excess demand for emergency services“, adds this professional.
Porto researchers create digital tool to control asthma
In the fight against asthma, researchers from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP) have developed and validated a new digital tool for the daily control of asthma, allowing to improve the monitoring and management of the disease by patients.
“O e-DASTHMA digital biomarker it could be an important aid not only in the follow-up of patients with uncontrolled asthma, but also in shared decision-making and, in the future, in the generation of daily alerts for patients or doctors”, notes a press release from the FMUP.
The research, published in The Lancet Digital Health and also led by the Centro Hospitalar Universitário Charité (Germany), used “real world” data through a free respiratory disease mobile application called MASK-air.
“Researchers analyzed the equivalent of 135,000 days of more than 1,500 patients with allergic rhinitis and asthma”, clarifies the Faculty.
The work, which brought together researchers from more than 10 nationalities, proved that the new electronic method can also help in the stratification of patients for the selection of biological medicinesapplication in clinical trials or observational studies.
Cited in the statement, the first author of the study, Bernardo Sousa Pinto, clarifies that this type of tool “enables a providing more personalized health caremaking it possible to identify the cases that require closer medical care, as well as guide the treatment according to their control and adherence profile”.
Currently, questionnaires are used to assess the evolution of symptoms over periods of one or more weeks in asthma control.
“If we add this type of daily information data to these questionnaires, we are contributing to improve asthma control in this group of patients”, says Bernardo Sousa Pinto.
The FMUP professor and CINTESIS researcher adds that the tool developed is “innovative” because, unlike other types of questionnaires, “it simultaneously takes into account the symptoms and the use of medication”
In the article, the researchers state that the new measurement method is still “capable of avoid memory biases associated with long-term assessments”, which will allow a “better identification” of the occurrence of asthma exacerbations.
This new method, based on digital biomarkers, is also compared by the researchers to the approach adopted in clinical practice for the diabetes monitoringin which glycated hemoglobin is used for long-term control and blood glucose for daily assessment.
