Comparison among different instruments to evaluate the clinical control in asthmatic patients submitted to aerobic training

There are evidences suggesting that aerobic training improves clinical control in asthmatic patients; however, remains unclear, which instrument is more reliable to detect such benefits. Aim: To compare three different instruments regarding the ability to identify change on asthma control in asthmatics submitted to aerobic training. Methods: 110 patients with moderate or severe asthma were divided in two groups: Control (CG; educational program+breathing exercise as placebo; n=71) or Training (TG; similar to CG+aerobic training; n=39). Interventions were composed of 24 sessions, Clinical control was evaluated before and after interventions by using the questionnaires: Asthma control test (ACT) and two versions of the Asthma clinical control: ACQ-6 and ACQ-7. The data were analyzed using t-test (p Results: Both groups were similar in the baseline data (p>0.05). Surprisingly, only ACQ-6 and ACQ-7 were able to identify a significantly improvement on asthma control in TG compared to CG (ACQ-6: 0.58±0.88 vs 0.14±0.88; p=0.01 and ACQ-7: 0.44±0.77 vs 0.11±0.75; p=0.03), however only the ACQ-6 detected a clinical improvement between TG and CG. The ACT not identify improvement on asthma control between the groups (2.41±3.62 vs 1.41±3.48; p=0.16). Although these results, it was not found difference on the percentage of improves on clinical control when compared ACQ-6, ACQ-7 and ACT in each group (TG: 23.9%, 15.4%, 18.1%; and CG: 6.4%, 2.3%, 13.3%, respectively) (p>0.05). Conclusions: Our results suggest that ACQ-6 is more reliable to identity clinical and significantly improvement on asthma control in patients that performed the exercise training.