PRS68 The Humanistic Burden of Mild Asthma: Evidence from the Novelty Study

Abstract

BACKGROUND: There is limited evidence on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among patients with mild asthma. NOVELTY (NCT02760329) is a global, prospective, observational study of patients with a physician-assigned diagnosis of asthma and/or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. To describe the humanistic burden of patients with physician-assessed mild asthma. Physicians were asked to classify asthma as mild, moderate or severe at baseline; no diagnostic or severity criteria were specified. The humanistic burden was evaluated by assessment of symptom control (Asthma Control Test [ACT]), disease-specific HRQOL (St George’s Respiratory Questionnaire [SGRQ]) and self-reported current health status (included with the SGRQ on a 5-point Likert scale from 'very good' to 'very poor').1 Comorbidities were also reported. A total of 2,004 patients had physician-assessed mild asthma (mean age 50.1 [SD 17.6]; 36.2% male; mean pre- and post-bronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 second [% predicted] 88.8 [SD 17.1] and 92.3 [SD 16.7], respectively). Almost one third of patients with mild asthma reported problems with symptom control at baseline (ACT score ≤19, 29.7%), with 17.8% being ‘not well-controlled’ (ACT score 16–19) and 11.9% being ‘very poorly controlled’ (ACT score ≤15). Mean baseline SGRQ total score for patients with mild asthma (23.5 [SD 17.9]) was higher (indicating lower HRQOL) than that reported for subjects with no history of respiratory disease (6 [95% CI 5–7], mean age 46 years).1 Current health status was ‘fair’ or ‘poor/very poor’ in 33.5% and 5.7% of patients with mild asthma, respectively. Comorbidities of rhinosinusitis and anxiety/depression were reported in 58.4% and 14.1% of patients, respectively. In NOVELTY, many patients with physician-assessed mild asthma reported poor asthma symptom control or impairment of their disease-specific HRQOL, with a subset of patients reporting poor current health status. REFERENCES: 1. Jones PW and Forde Y. SGRQ manual 2009.