For a study, airways disorders, particularly asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, accounted for the majority of respiratory ailments encountered by pulmonologists. Inflammation was a common etiology in both of these illnesses. Although it was always considered that asthma was a disease of the bigger airways, a huge amount of evidence had disproved the long-held notion. Researchers realized that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma are both inflammatory airway disorders that primarily impact the small airways and, to a lesser degree, the bigger airways. As a result, all new medication development focused on either improving drug delivery to the smaller airways or suppressing inflammation in the airways.
The assumption in the current evaluation of patients with asthma was that by titrating treatment approaches to normalize symptom management and enhance airflow dynamics, researchers would be able to suppress the inflammation existing in the airways. That was not the case since airway inflammation continued even after spirometric parameters had been normalized and asthmatic symptoms were controlled.
Unfortunately, multiple investigations depicted that chronic airway inflammation occurred despite proper vigorous treatment and patient symptom management. Inflammometry—the measurement of inflammation—was increasingly being utilized to titrate the treatment efforts in order to obtain improved asthma control.
Reference:journals.lww.com/clinpulm/Abstract/2015/03000/Measuring_Airway_Inflammation.1.aspx
