SC Connecticut News

Sandra Zaeh, MD, an assistant professor of medicine in the Yale Department of Internal Medicine Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, is spearheading a study to enhance clinical outcomes for patients with asthma. Zaeh's research indicates that the current guideline-based treatment for moderate to severe asthma is applied less than 15 percent of the time due to various factors, including a lack of knowledge about the appropriate treatment approach.

In the coming months, Zaeh will oversee the recruitment of subjects from the Yale Center for Asthma and Airways Disease for a study conducted in collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The study, funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, seeks to improve care quality for patients at risk of asthma attacks.

In an interview, Zaeh delves into the basics of asthma, different treatment approaches for this inflammatory condition, and why controlling asthma is crucial for physicians and pulmonologists. She explains that asthma is a chronic lung disease where bronchial airways in the lungs become narrowed and swollen, making breathing difficult. Asthma disproportionately affects Black and Latinx people, low-income populations, and other groups.

Uncontrolled asthma can cause adults to miss workdays and children to miss school. It can lead to hospitalizations, emergency room visits, and in some cases, fatality. For several decades now, asthma has been treated with control and relief medications. However, recent data supports a slightly different management strategy involving anti-inflammatory reliever therapy for asthma.

Zaeh's study aims to compare two such strategies: SMART (Single Maintenance And Reliever Therapy) and PARTICS (Patient Activated Reliever-Triggered Inhaled CorticoSteroids). While SMART uses one inhaler for both control and relief purposes in moderate to severe asthma cases; PARTICS involves using more than one inhaler along with nebulizers as relievers.

A few years ago PARTICS was shown to reduce severe asthma exacerbations and improve asthma control and quality of life in Black and Latinx patients with moderate to severe asthma. The goal of the current study is to determine if these two approaches are equally effective or if one outperforms the other.

Zaeh believes that having different asthma management approaches that can be tailored for each patient based on needs and preferences is essential. By studying these different anti-inflammatory reliever approaches, the implementation of these therapies can be improved, providing more options to treat asthma.

The Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine is one of eleven sections within Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Internal Medicine. To learn more about Yale-PCCSM, visit PCCSM's website, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.