Pharmacogenomics of Asthma Treatment

Lyle J. Palmes, Eric S. Silverman, Jeffrey M. Drazen and Scott T. Weiss 

Asthma is the most serious of the atopic diseases and has become epidemic, affecting more than 155 million individuals in the developed world. It is the most common chronic childhood disease in developed nations [1], and carries a very substantial direct and indirect economic cost worldwide [2]. A number of pharmacological treatments have been developed for asthma. These treatments have a modest efficacy overall, due in part to widely variable individual responses to asthma drugs. Because of such variability, it is clear that some of the substantial resources expended on asthma medication, estimated to exceed U.S. 3 billion per annum in the U.S. alone [3], would be better spent targeting those patients who 

Asthma is characterized by variable symptoms such as wheeze, shortness of breath and coughing and is usually associated with airway inflammation, with variably reduced spirometric indices [4, 5], with increased non-specific airway responsiveness (AR) to spasmogens [6, 7] and increased levels of semm immunoglobulin E (IgE) and eosinophils [8-10]. The symptoms of asthma are primarily due to excessive airway narrowing, which leads to an increased resistance to airflow, especially during forced expiration, and produces characteristic spirometric findings. A cardinal feature of asthma is that airway narrowing is reversible either spontaneously or as the result of therapy. 

---

Pharmacogenomics may be beneficial to people of color because of their high rates of morbidity and mortality from certain cancers, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, asthma, HIV /AIDS, Alzheimer disease, clinical depression, and other diseases. Thus more effective therapies help those individuals most in need of treatment. 

---