Is your asthma under control?

Roughly simplified, asthma management works like this: The doctor makes a diagnosis and prescribes medication if necessary. The patient comes to the practice for regular check-ups. If everything looks good, the medication is maintained. If not, the doctor changes the therapy depending on the results of the examination.⁴ He usually asks the patient about their medical history, identifies symptoms and carries out a lung function test.The test shows how powerful the lungs are and how much the airways are constricted. What is relatively new are biomarkers such as eosinophils and Fractional exhaled Nitric Oxide (FeNO) in the breath. They show how inflamed the airways are. This information is important for the doctor when prescribing anti-inflammatory medication such as biologics or inhaled corticosteroids (ICS). Using these inflammation markers, he can recognize whether they are working.

A challenge in asthma management is mostly the infrequent visits to the doctor's practice: When patients come for a check-up a few times a year, the doctor takes a snapshot of their current condition. He cannot measure how the asthma develops between check-ups. As a result, patients are sometimes not detected during the practice measurement, even though there is an urgent need for action. This is impressively illustrated by a case study from the new FeNO@home study, which is expected to be published in September 2024. Although the patient reported severe symptoms, his values were normal when he visited the doctor. Only after measuring FeNO values at home did it become apparent that he had repeatedly and massively exceeded the official inflammation thresholds². This caused the doctor to prescribe him a modern biologic.³ Conversely, patients may regularly take too much or the wrong medication because they had a "bad day" when they went for their check-up, for example due to an acute infection.

FeNO home measurement can help here: If patients regularly measure and document their FeNO value at home, they know exactly how their inflammation is progressing. This allows them to adjust their therapy to their actual needs at any time in consultation with their doctor. The FeNO progression over a longer period of time helps those involved to better understand the individual development of the disease and to initiate the right measures at an early stage, if necessary even before the next check-up appointment. This is particularly important when it comes to selecting the right medication and the appropriate dosage – not too much and not too little.³