Original Articles: Asthma Lower Airway DiseasesFactors associated with severity and exacerbation of asthma: a baseline analysis of the COhort for Reality and Evolution of adult Asthma in Korea (COREA)
Section snippets
INTRODUCTION
Asthma is a heterogeneous chronic obstructive airway disease, and patients present with various clinical phenotypes of differing severities. Therefore, long-term changes must be monitored in a large patient group. Although some long-term follow-up asthma observational studies have been performed on young children or on birth cohorts, few cohort studies have been performed on adult asthma patients of the whole spectrum of severity from mild to severe to date.1, 2
The representative adult asthma
Establishment and Design of the Cohort
The COhort for Reality and Evolution of adult Asthma in Korea (COREA) study is a prospective, observational, multicentered, 9-year (2005-2013), follow-up study of Korean patients diagnosed as having asthma. The patients are recruited by allergists or pulmonologists from 11 centers in diverse areas of Korea; the participating institutions are the Asan Medical Center at the University of Ulsan and hospitals of Seoul National University, Bundang Seoul National University, Yonsei University,
Demographic Data
Baseline demographic data and clinical characteristics of the study participants in this analysis are given in Table 1. The mean age of participants is 49 years, and there are approximately 1.24 times more women than men. The ratio of atopy to nonatopy is 0.63, as generally found. Our patients have experienced respiratory symptoms for a mean of 10.20 years, were diagnosed as having asthma an average of 8.29 years ago, and have been treated by physicians for a mean of 6.42 years. Most patients
DISCUSSION
The new guidelines prepared by GINA in 2006 introduced the concept of asthma control.12 Although the concept of control provides convenient standards that can be easily applied to clinical situations, control has a dynamic aspect; hence, focus on control only may neglect the intrinsic asthmatic condition, compared with classification of severity primarily based on lung function tests. Therefore, the present study evaluated the severity of asthma by physician primarily based on the earlier GINA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The COREA Study Group includes the following investigators: Professor Hee-Bom Moon, Professor You Sook Cho, Professor Tae-Bum Kim (University of Ulsan), Professor Sang-Heon Cho, Professor Heung-Woo Park (Seoul National University), Professor Yoon-Seok Chang (Bundang Seoul National University), Professor Jung Won Park (Yonsei University), Professor Byoung-Whui Choi (Chungang University), Professor Young-Joo Cho (Ewha Womans University), Professor Ho-Joo Yoon, Professor Sang-Heon Kim (Hanyang
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Cited by (0)
Dr Cho and Dr Moon contributed equally to this article.
Disclosures: Authors have nothing to disclose.
Funding Sources: This study was supported by grant A040153 from the Korean Health 21 R&D Project, Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea.