TY - JOUR T1 - Do we need new asthma control tests? JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 1116 LP - 1118 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00162014 VL - 44 IS - 5 AU - Jean Bousquet AU - Arnaud Bourdin AU - Pascal Demoly Y1 - 2014/11/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/44/5/1116.abstract N2 - The assessment of asthma control is pivotal to the evaluation of treatment response. The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP) guidelines and the 2006 update of the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) proposed to use asthma control (control of manifestations of the disease) to guide treatment [1]. It is important in clinical practice to identify patients with uncontrolled asthma, since they have a risk of exacerbations [2]. Asthma control may be assessed using several approaches [3, 4]. There is no gold standard for the assessment of asthma control, which is usually considered to be a continuum from total to poor control [3–5]. The concept of composite measures for the assessment of asthma control is based on 1) the generally poor correlation between different domains of asthma, 2) the lack of a single gold standard and 3) the use of multiple end-points providing a more complete picture of asthma control than a single end-point [3, 4]. The GINA guidelines propose a questionnaire for recent events and exacerbations over the past year [1]. Results of pulmonary function tests are added to the definition. However, albeit recommended, pulmonary function tests are unavailable in most practices throughout the world. The asthma control questionnaires (e.g. the Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ) and Asthma Control Test (ACT)) are based on a … ER -