Cluster Subanalysis of Patients With Severe Asthma Who Responded to Omalizumab.

Abstract

Asthma is a heterogeneous disease that manifests with variations in signs and symptoms, age of onset, triggers, disease progression, pulmonary function, and airway inflammation [1]. Recently, significant efforts have been made to phenotype asthma, with the objective of identifying patients who are responsive to specific therapies [2]. The different methods used to phenotype asthma have generated bias [3]. In this sense, cluster approaches are one of the most frequently used unbiased techniques [4]. They are generally based on cohorts of patients analyzed using a cluster methodology, which gives rise to various phenotypes [5-7]. Here, we used an innovative contrasting approach, namely, a real-world study in which we selected patients with an excellent response to omalizumab (hyperresponders) and performed a cluster analysis to identify responder phenotypes.