Standardized outcome measures proposed for asthma clinical research

NIH-funded research has led to many improvements in the management and treatment of asthma, a chronic lung condition that affects more than 25 million people in the United States. However, asthma clinical research has lacked a common set of outcomes, measures used by researchers to assess a disease during the course of a study. This lack of standardization has made it difficult to compare results between individual studies and to share data across studies, thus hindering the progress of asthma research.

The report identifies standard definitions and methodologies for measuring seven groups of outcomes that are important in asthma clinical studies: symptoms, exacerbations (asthma attacks), biomarkers (biological substances that indicate disease state), lung function, quality of life, asthma control questionnaire results, and health care utilization and costs. By using the same set of outcome measures in asthma clinical studies, researchers will be able compare their results more efficiently. This proposed standardization across asthma studies promises to enhance the development of prevention and treatment strategies and lead to improvements in the quality of asthma care.

Based on the recommendations of the report, NIH and other federal agencies will require the inclusion of the proposed outcomes in future government-funded asthma clinical research.

Journal reference: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

Provided by National Institutes of Health