Brittle asthma

Brittle asthma.

Brittle asthma is a rare form of severe asthma characterized by a wide variation of Peak Expiratory Flow (PEF), in spite of heavy doses of steroides. Brittle asthmatic patients had very serious and often, life threatening, attacks. Type 1 brittle asthma is characterized by a mantained PEF variability despite therapy, and it affected mostly female, aged between 15 and 55 years. Type 1 is associa...

Omalizumab treatment in brittle asthma

Asthma is a heterogeneous disease with variable characteristics such as lung function, symptoms and control, body weight, pattern of inflammation, and response to treatment. Brittle asthma is one of clinical phenotypes of asthma with unclear pathogenic mechanisms and appropriate treatment. Analysis of 2 described cases suggests that omalizumab could be useful in the treatment of brittle allergi...

P74 - Brittle asthma: a clinical phenotype of severe asthma

Background The term Brittle Asthma was generally used to describe those patients with sudden, severe attacks, usually out of the blue. Recently the following classification was suggested: type 1 characterized by a maintained wide PEF variability despite medical therapy, and type 2 characterized by sudden acute attacks on a background of apparently normal airway function. Patients who develop su...

Editorials Brittle asthma: fiend or phantom?

Psychiatric and social aspects of brittle asthma.

BACKGROUND Many studies have shown that emotional factors play a part in asthma, but few have compared patients with differing severities of asthma. It was our impression that patients with "brittle" asthma (BA; more than 40% diurnal variation in peak flow on 15 or more days a month over a period of at least six months, and persistent symptoms despite multiple drug treatment) had greater psycho...