The Problem with Diagnosing Asthma

Approximately 339 million people around the world are afflicted with asthma, with asthma-related mortality affecting the lives of three families each day. Staggeringly, around two-thirds of these deaths are avoidable. Insufficient treatment, inadequate management and diagnostic issues each contribute to asthma related mortality. Even today, up to 30% of asthma patients are wrongly diagnosed, not receiving the care they require to manage their disorder as a consequence.

In the UK, where someone is admitted to hospital every eight minutes because of asthma related problems, unsafe prescribing practices put more than 120,000 asthma patients at increased risk of a life-threatening attack. Asthma diagnosis can be highly difficult in some instances, particularly as the symptoms of multiple diseases manifest themselves in a similar way to those of asthma.

Typical diagnostic methodologies, such as peak flow and spirometry, yield insufficient insight, as many of these techniques merely assess airflow, rather than airway inflammation. The absence of a diagnostic inflammation evaluation is a major contributor to misdiagnosis in the patient population.