PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Tae-Bum Kim AU - An-Soo Jang AU - Hyouk-Soo Kwon AU - Jong-Sook Park AU - Yoon-Seok Chang AU - Sang-Heon Cho AU - Byoung Whui Choi AU - Jung-Won Park AU - Dong-Ho Nam AU - Ho-Joo Yoon AU - Young-Joo Cho AU - Hee-Bom Moon AU - You Sook Cho AU - Choon-Sik Park TI - Identification of asthma clusters in two independent Korean adult asthma cohorts AID - 10.1183/09031936.00100811 DP - 2013 Jun 01 TA - European Respiratory Journal PG - 1308--1314 VI - 41 IP - 6 4099 - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/41/6/1308.short 4100 - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/41/6/1308.full SO - Eur Respir J2013 Jun 01; 41 AB - Asthma is a heterogeneous airway disease with various clinical phenotypes. It is crucial to clearly identify clinical phenotypes to achieve better asthma management. We used cluster analysis to classify the clinical groups of 724 asthmatic patients from the Cohort for Reality and Evolution of Adult Asthma in Korea (COREA), and in 1843 subjects from another independent Korean asthma cohort of Soonchunhyang University Asthma Genome Research Centre (SCH) (Bucheon, Republic of Korea). Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed by Ward's method, followed by κ-means cluster analysis. Cluster analysis of the COREA cohort indicated four asthma subtypes: 1) smoking asthma; 2) severe obstructive asthma; 3) early-onset atopic asthma; and 4) late-onset mild asthma. An independent cluster analysis of the SCH cohort also indicated four clusters that were similar to the COREA clusters. Our results indicate that adult Korean asthma patients can be classified into four distinct clusters.