World Asthma Day: the new early screening program for asthma patients

May 6, 2025 is the 27th World Asthma Day. This year's theme, "Let inhalation therapy benefit all asthma patients," reveals the common proposition faced by 300 million asthma patients around the world: How to break through the bottleneck of traditional diagnosis and treatment and achieve a leap from early detection to early treatment? Nowadays, a variety of convenient detection methods are being developed and applied, bringing new hope for early screening and long-term monitoring of asthma.

1. Current status of asthma prevention and treatment: a grim situation

As a common chronic airway inflammatory disease, bronchial asthma presents a grim situation. A large number of patients are hospitalized due to acute asthma attacks, and some patients fail to receive timely and accurate diagnosis and treatment. Asthma prevention and treatment work faces huge challenges. Frequent and severe asthma attacks are fatal to patients, and asthma prevention and control should be highly valued.

2. Limitations of traditional diagnosis and treatment methods

• Blind spots in pulmonary function tests: pulmonary function tests can only reflect ventilation function and are difficult to fully capture the dynamic changes of airway inflammation.

• Time lag between symptoms and inflammation: before an acute attack, the results of pulmonary function tests may still be normal for some patients, resulting in missing the golden period for early intervention.

• Lack of primary medical resources: Primary medical units have limited diagnostic means, the rate of pulmonary function instruments in primary hospitals is low, and the compliance of the middle-aged and elderly population is also low, which further exacerbates the misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis of asthma.

3. New means of early screening for prevention and control: breath testing

• Breath inorganic detection: The American Thoracic Society (ATS) guidelines clearly state that exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) detection can dynamically monitor the inflammatory state of eosinophils. FeNO detection is non-invasive and convenient, and is particularly suitable for children and people with COPD-Asthma overlap.

• Exhaled volatile organic compound (VOC) detection: According to innovative research published at the 2024 COPD Academic Conference, there are significant differences in the characteristic spectrum of VOCs in the exhaled breath of asthma patients and PRISm (retention ratio lung function impairment) patients, which can identify asthma patients early. VOCs detection technology based on micro gas chromatography has the advantages of early warning, identification and full-process management. Exhaled VOC detection is expected to identify airway inflammation in advance and can distinguish different types of respiratory diseases. Home testing can also realize dynamic monitoring of inflammation and effectively reduce the rate of acute attacks.

4. Exhaled VOC detection: a new tool for early screening of asthma prevention and control

• Early warning, early detection of potential risks: Exhaled VOC detection can identify airway inflammation, and its advantage is that it can detect abnormalities early. This means that potential asthma risks can be detected in advance before the patient has obvious symptoms of impaired lung function, buying precious time for early intervention and treatment to prevent further deterioration of the disease.

• Phenotypic identification, accurate positioning of disease types: Different types of asthma have differences in treatment options and prognosis. Exhaled VOC detection is expected to accurately locate the type of disease, so that doctors can develop more targeted and personalized treatment plans for patients, improve treatment effects, and reduce ineffective or excessive treatment.

• Full-process management and dynamic tracking of disease changes: Its convenience and non-invasiveness make home testing possible. Patients can conduct regular tests at home to achieve dynamic monitoring of airway inflammation, effectively reduce the acute attack rate, improve the quality of life of patients, and provide strong support for the long-term management of asthma.

• Simple operation and easy to popularize and promote: The exhaled VOC test is simple to operate. Patients only need to exhale as required to complete the test without complicated and tedious preparation and operation processes. This makes the detection technology easy to popularize and promote in medical institutions at all levels, especially grassroots medical units, which helps to expand the screening scope of asthma, improve the early diagnosis rate, and allow more patients to benefit from accurate detection and treatment.