The Severe Asthma Registry – German data

Patients with severe persistent asthma represent the highest unmet medical need among the asthmatic population. To improve the understanding of underlying mechanisms and disease progression the German Asthma Net (GAN, www.german-asthma-net.de) launched a Severe Asthma Registry in December 2011. Enrolled patients undergo detailed clinical and physiologic evaluations, including patients’ medical history, allergy and lung function tests, blood analyses as well as past and concomitant medication and comorbidities. Patients are followed up every year. As of February 2018, 1097 subjects were recruited in Germany, Austria, and Slovenia. The mean age±SEM of the 839 German adult patients is 50.6±0.5 years (60.1% female), FEV1 is 1.97±0.03 L (64.0±0.8%), median exhaled NO is 36 ppb (interquartile range 18-65), and 88% have partly controlled or uncontrolled asthma (GINA) with 4.0±0.2 exacerbations during the last 12 months. 46.7% of the German patients have allergic asthma, 43.7% are on oral glucocorticosteroids, 30.6% on omalizumab, and 8.3% on anti-IL-5 antibodies. 348 patients already had a follow-up after 1 year, 199 after 2 years, and 1 patient just reached the 7 year follow-up. Recruitment of additional patients with severe asthma is ongoing, this will allow further characterization of clinical, physiologic, cellular and biochemical parameters related to severe disease in a longitudinal assessment as well as to identify local differences. In addition, the Severe Asthma Registry may help to confirm and extend results obtained in similar databases.