Page 63 - Comprehensive treatment of patients with glucocorticoid-dependent severe asthma

non-prednisone-dependent or mild-moderate asthma (9% vs. 0% and 0%; p = 0.004) and (19% vs. 6.4% and 5.5%; p=0.01), respectively (Fig 1).
Table 1. Baseline characteristics of patients with severe prednisone-dependent asthma vs. moderate- severe and mild-moderate asthma
Anxiety and depression in asthma
n
Age (yr)*
Female gender %
Asthma duration (yr)†
BMI*
Ex-smoker %
Packyears†
Atopy %
OCS dose (mg/day)† Duration of daily OCS (mth) ICS dose (μg/day)†
LABA %
pbFEV1
Severe prednisone- dependent
67
49.6 (12.9)
58.2
21 (9-36)
28.2 (5.6)
43.3
0 (0-4.1)
54.5
10 (5-15)
44 (3-360)
1000 (625-1250) 100
81.0 (23.5)
Severe non prednisone- dependent
47
40 (16.5)
53.2
16 (5-21.8) 26.5 (5.4)
17
0 (0-0)
66.7
0 (0-0)
0 (0-0)
750 (500-1500) 91.5
96 (23.6)
Mild-moderate
73
46.6 (15)
60.3
10 (2-27)
26.1 (4.8)
37
0 (0-3.3)
60.7
0 (0-0)
0 (0-0)
250 (250-500) 68.5
102.4 (14.3)
p-value
0.003 0.7 0.005 0.07 0.01 0.013 0.4 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001
Footnote Table 1. * mean (SD) † median (range). BMI, body mass index; OCS, oral corticosteroids; ICS, Inhaled corticosteroids fluticason equivalent; LABA; long acting Beta agonist, pbFEV1, forced expiratory volume in 1second post bronchodilator.
Logistic regression analyses showed that patients with prednisone-dependent asthma were respectively 3.4 (95%CI: 1.0-10.8, p = 0.04) and 3.5 (95%CI: 1.3-9.6, p = 0.01) times more likely to have clinically significant symptoms of depression as compared to non prednisone-dependent severe asthma and mild-moderate
asthma.
In addition, as compared to mild-moderate asthma, patients with prednisone- dependent asthma were 2.5 (95%CI: 01.1-5.5, p = 0.02) times more likely to have significant symptoms of anxiety and 1.6 (95%CI: 0.7-3.7, p = 0.2) times more likely as compared to non-prednisone dependent severe asthma, although the latter one was not significant. In addition, there were no associations found between depression or anxiety and age, asthma duration, BMI, smoking history and dose of OCS. Also, there was no association found between the dose of prednisone and anxiety or depression.
There were no differences in personality traits between the three groups (Table 2).
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