TY - JOUR T1 - Tiotropium bromide is effective for severe asthma with noneosinophilic phenotype JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 1379 LP - 1380 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00014108 VL - 31 IS - 6 AU - H. Iwamoto AU - A. Yokoyama AU - N. Shiota AU - H. Shoda AU - Y. Haruta AU - N. Hattori AU - N. Kohno Y1 - 2008/06/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/31/6/1379.abstract N2 - To the Editor: Although currently available asthma medications are very effective in the majority of cases, there remains a subgroup for which disease control is difficult. Anticholinergics have long been used to treat asthma, although their current role in therapy is supplementary 1. Tiotropium bromide, a recently developed anticholinergic, is a long-acting bronchodilator with a well-established effectiveness for treating chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 2. Although some subgroups of asthmatics seem to respond better to anticholinergics, the pathophysiological features of these responders have yet to be established 3, 4. Previous studies that aimed to identify asthma subgroups which respond better to anticholinergics have suggested the following clinical features: patients with nocturnal symptoms, chronic asthma showing concurrent fixed airway obstruction, intrinsic asthma with longer duration of disease and nonatopic asthma 1, 5. The objective of the present study was to determine the characteristics of asthmatics which show good responses to tiotropium bromide. We investigated the efficacy of tiotropium bromide in … ER -