Amy Jordan, PhD
Lack of adherence to treatment is a common problem in many areas of medicine. While adequate treatments exist and the consequences of leaving a disorder untreated are well known, some patients still choose to not use, or intermittently use, their prescribed treatments.
“This can be difficult for clinicians and healthcare professionals to recognize as many patients will be reluctant to admit to poor usage,” said Amy Jordan, PhD, C.R. Roper Fellow, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Dr. Jordan will co-chair D12 “Understanding and Identifying Non-Adherence to Better Treat Asthma, COPD and OSA” from 8:15 to 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday, May 18, during ATS 2011.
“The speakers will discuss reasons for poor adherence, specifically with regard to inhaler therapy, exercise programs and nocturnal non-invasive ventilation. In addition, we’ll provide attendees with practical tips to identify and address nonadherence in their clinics,” she said.
Her co-chairs are Sande Okelo, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, and Kristie Ross, MD, instructor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
This symposium is among several offerings focused on asthma care.
Year in Review
The 8:15 to 10:15 a.m. Wednesday D1 “Clinical Year in Review: Asthma” is aimed toward those whose patients have diverse lung diseases. Presenters, who prior to the conference conducted extensive literature reviews and sought peer feedback, will highlight recently published works, advances, and new strategies and treatments in asthma, COPD, host-microbe interactions in airway disease, and pulmonary vascular.
This is one of 16 Clinical Year in Review sessions that will be presented each day (four each morning) at the ATS meeting.
2010 NHLBI-NIAID Recommendations
Among three sessions on Monday, May 16, will be B5 “NHLBI and NIAID Recommendations for Standardized Asthma Outcomes in Clinical Research” from 8:15 to 10:45 a.m. This session is geared toward researchers, clinicians and those responsible for clinical pathways, guidelines or quality improvement programs.
Presenters will give the final recommendations from the 2010 NHLBI-NIAID Asthma Outcomes Workshop on establishing standardized definitions and methodologies for a range of asthma outcome measures. Asthma outcomes include: exacerbations, biomarkers, asthma control measured by composite scores, symptoms, physiology, quality of life and healthcare utilization and costs.
Participants will learn how the recommendations relate to the 2009 ATS/ERS Statement on standardizing endpoints on asthma control and exacerbations and how the recommendations will affect future NIH asthma clinical research funding opportunities.
ASM, the Human Microbiome and Asthma
Two others that afternoon are B85 “The Role of Airway Smooth Muscle in the Origin and Persistence of Asthma” and B86 “The Human Microbiome and Development of Asthma and Allergy,” both from 2 to 4:30 p.m.
The first of these two will explore the role of ASM in asthma, in relation to the natural history of asthma, particularly the development of airway pathology, onset of asthma in early life, abnormal airway function and the persistence of asthma of varying severity. Targeted toward basic and applied researchers, pediatricians, and pulmonologists, the symposium will explore current and new treatment approaches targeting the ASM will be discussed.
The second will provide new findings about the role of the human microbiome in the origin of atopic disease for those with clinical, research or administrative responsibilities. Changes in the human microbiome are suspected to be associated with development of lifestyle associated diseases. Particularly, imbalance of the airway and intestinal mucosal bacterial eco-system has been suggested as a lifestyle related risk factor for asthma and allergy. Recent evidence suggests that the bronchial tree contains a characteristic microbiota that is disturbed in asthmatic airways. Disturbed colonization of the airways has been associated with the development of asthma, and reduced diversity of the intestinal microbiota has been associated with development of atopy. Together, this suggests new avenues for the understanding of the origins of asthma and allergy.
Assessing Asthma Exposure
Tuesday afternoon brings C89 “Using a Job-Exposure Matrix to Assess Exposure in Epidemiologic Studies of Asthma.”
Occupation makes a substantial contribution to the onset and exacerbation of asthma among adults. Epidemiologic studies can improve our understanding of this occupational contribution if the assessment of exposure is accurate. Although job-exposure matrices are often used to characterize occupational exposures in studies of asthma, many researchers and clinicians do not understand how these exposure-assessment tools are constructed and tested. This scientific symposium describes the challenges of assessing exposures for asthma, the development and testing of job-exposure matrices that have been used in asthma studies, the elements of a task-exposure matrix, and strategies for improving future job-exposure matrices for asthma.
This 2 to 4:30 p.m. symposium will describe the challenges of assessing exposures for asthma, the development and testing of job-exposure matrices that have been used in asthma studies, the elements of a task-exposure matrix, and strategies for improving future job-exposure matrices for asthma.
The target audience is researchers and clinicians who read journal articles that report findings from epidemiologic studies of adult asthma; researchers and clinicians who want a better understanding of occupational exposure assessment for epidemiologic research; and researchers who conduct epidemiologic research on adult asthma
Participants will hear about the challenges of assessing occupational exposures for asthma; how a job-exposure matrix is developed and tested for validity and reliability; and how to distinguish the merits of a task-exposure matrix when investigating asthma.