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. 2018 Aug 22;4(3):00013-2018.
doi: 10.1183/23120541.00013-2018. eCollection 2018 Jul.

Understanding asthma phenotypes: the World Asthma Phenotypes (WASP) international collaboration

Lucy Pembrey  1 , Mauricio L Barreto  2   3 , Jeroen Douwes  4 , Philip Cooper  5   6   7 , John Henderson  8 , Harriet Mpairwe  9 , Cristina Ardura-Garcia  7 , Martha Chico  7 , Collin Brooks  4 , Alvaro A Cruz  10   11 , Alison M Elliott  9 , Camila A Figueiredo  2 , Sinéad M Langan  1 , Beatrice Nassanga  9 , Susan Ring  8 , Laura Rodrigues  1 , Neil Pearce  1   4
Affiliations

Understanding asthma phenotypes: the World Asthma Phenotypes (WASP) international collaboration

Lucy Pembrey et al. ERJ Open Res. .

Abstract

The World Asthma Phenotypes (WASP) study started in 2016 and has been conducted in five centres, in the UK, New Zealand, Brazil, Ecuador and Uganda. The objectives of this study are to combine detailed biomarker and clinical information in order to 1) better understand and characterise asthma phenotypes in high-income countries (HICs) and low and middle-income countries (LMICs), and in high and low prevalence centres; 2) compare phenotype characteristics, including clinical severity; 3) assess the risk factors for each phenotype; and 4) assess how the distribution of phenotypes differs between high prevalence and low prevalence centres. Here we present the rationale and protocol for the WASP study to enable other centres around the world to carry out similar analyses using a standardised protocol. Large collaborative and integrative studies like this are essential to further our understanding of asthma phenotypes. The findings of this study will help elucidate the aetiological mechanisms of asthma and might potentially identify new causes and guide the development of new treatments, thereby enabling better management and prevention of asthma in both HICs and LMICs.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: J. Douwes reports receiving grants from the European Research Council during the conduct of the study and grants from the New Zealand Health Research Council outside the submitted work. Conflict of interest: J. Henderson reports receiving grants from the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust during the conduct of the study. Conflict of interest: A.M. Elliott reports receiving grants from the European Union during the conduct of the study, and grants from the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, Royal Society, Academy of Medical Sciences and British Infection Society, outside the submitted work. Conflict of interest: S.M. Langan reports receiving grants from the Wellcome Trust during the conduct of the study. Conflict of interest: S. Ring reports receiving grants from the European Union during the conduct of the study. Conflict of interest: A.A. Cruz reports receiving an investigator-initiated grant for a clinical trial from GSK, an honorarium for a clinical trial from Merck, Sharp and Dohme, honoraria for consultancy, speaking and a clinical trial from AstraZeneca, honoraria for consultancy and speaking from Boehringer-Ingelheim and Novartis, and an honorarium for speaking from Eurofarma, outside the submitted work.

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