Asthma-Dx
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Asthma-Dx: A platform for investigating novel diagnostic techniques to improve asthma diagnosis in primary care (pilot)
IRAS ID
358432
Contact name
Helen Ashdown
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Asthma is a lung condition where the airways can become narrowed and inflamed causing coughing, breathlessness and wheezing which vary over time. At the moment, there is no single test that can say whether someone has asthma or not, and the diagnosis is made on a combination of the patient’s symptoms and one or more breathing tests (e.g. spirometry) which look for airway narrowing. The problem is that as asthma symptoms vary, the results may be normal by the time the tests are done. We know that patients find it very frustrating to have lots of tests, none of which provide a final answer, and that undiagnosed asthma can result in long-term lung damage.
We want to investigate to see how we could detect asthma earlier, using new techniques and tests to see how they compare to current methods.
Patients who contact their GP with symptoms suggestive of asthma will be referred to the study. The study will include questionnaires about symptoms, a consultation with a research GP, in-person assessment including all the usual tests for asthma diagnosis plus a panel of new tests, and a peak flow diary at home for two weeks plus new home self-monitoring tests. Healthy volunteers with no symptoms, will also complete the tests, as a comparison group.
This is a platform study which means that new tests can be added to the study as they become available and be tested against other techniques, but we will make sure participants do not have to do too many new tests in one go. At first (as a ‘pilot’) we aim to recruit 100 patients with suspected asthma and 50 healthy volunteers. We will look at whether this approach for studying new tests in asthma is successful and plan to extend this in the future.REC name
London - Riverside Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
26/LO/0110
Date of REC Opinion
27 Mar 2026
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion