This technique could predict asthma attacks up to years in advance

Some 28 million Americans suffer from asthma attacks. Now, researchers have developed a new method that they say could predict when attacks strike up to five years in advance.

By looking at small molecules in the blood of more than 2,500 people with asthma – an approach known metabolomics – the team at Massachusetts’ Mass General Brigham and the Swedish Karolinska Institutet discovered a relationship between molecules that influence asthma that they say can help tell which patients are at a greater risk for future attacks.

They found that measuring the amount of fats known as sphingolipids compared to naturally-produced steroid hormones could help predict how likely someone is to have an attack over the next five years.

This strategy, they say, could even sometimes tell the time before the first attack in high and low-risk groups for up to a full year.

“We found that the interaction between sphingolipids and steroids drives the risk profile,” Craig Wheelock, a principal researcher at the Karolinska Institutet, said in a statement. “This ratio approach is not only biologically meaningful but also analytically robust, making it highly suitable for development into a practical cost-effective clinical test.”

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The study analyzed data from three large asthma studies that included decades of electronic records from more than 2,500 participants.

The team tested several different ratios of sphingolipids to steroid hormones to develop the model, which was able to identify patients who were high risk with around 90 percent accuracy, when assessed in addition to medication use and genetic history.

They also found that a model just using other standard clinical information was only between 50- and 70 percent accurate.

The researchers said their findings showed lab testing could be easily implemented to help patients in the future — but that their results need to be tested further before their findings can be applied clinically.

They have applied for a patent for the method.

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Asthma attacks are a sudden worsening of asthma symptoms that can lead to coughing, wheezing, chest tightness and difficulty breathing.

They may be triggered due to allergies, a respiratory illness, stress, exercise or exposure to cold air, mold, smoke or chemicals and toxins in the air.

Sometimes attacks occur instantly after exposure, but it may take hours or even days for an attack to start, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

During an attack, muscles around the airways tighten, becoming swollen and irritated and producing mucus.

Asthma attack deaths are relatively rare, but more than 3,000 still die over the course of a year.

“One of the biggest challenges in treating asthma is that we currently have no effective way to tell which patient is going to have a severe attack in the near future,” Jessica Lasky-Su, an associate professor at Mass General Brigham, said. “Our findings solve a critical unmet need.”