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Characteristics of asthma-related nocturnal cough – a potential new digital biomarker
frank.rassouli@kssg.ch ERS International Congress 2020
Frank Rassouli1, Peter Tinschert2, Filipe Barata3, Claudia Steurer-Stey4,5, Elgar Fleisch2,3, Milo A Puhan4, Florent Baty1, Tobias Kowatsch2,3, Martin H Brutsche1
1Lung center, Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland; 2Center for Digital Health Interventions, Institute of Technology Management, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland; 3Center for Digital Health
Interventions, Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; 4Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; 5mediX group practice
Zurich, Switzerland
Introduction
Methods
Results (2)
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Results (3)
•The nature of nocturnal cough is largely unknown
•It might be a valid marker for asthma control but very
few studies characterized it as a basis for better
defining its role and its use as clinical marker
•This study investigated prevalence and characteristics
of nocturnal cough in asthmatics over the course of 4
weeks
•In 2 centers, 94 adult patients with physician-diagnosed
asthma were recruited
•Patient-reported outcomes and nocturnal sensor data
were collected by a smartphone with a chat-based
study app •To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the
first to describe prevalence and characteristics of
nocturnal cough in asthma over a period of one month,
demonstrating that it was a prevalent symptom with
large variance between patients and high persistence
within patients
•Cough events in asthmatics were 4.5 times more
frequent within the first 30 minutes of bedtime
indicating a potential role of positional change
•This study was funded by CSS Health Insurance, Lucerne, Switzerland
Results (1)
•Patients coughed in 53% of 2212 nights (range 0-345
coughs/night, figure 1a)
•Nocturnal cough rates showed considerable inter-
individual variance (figure 1b)
•The highest counts were measured in the first 30
minutes in bed (4.5-fold higher than rest of night, figure
1c)
Figure 1
•86% of coughs were part of a cough cluster. Clusters
consisted of a median of 2 coughs (IQR 2-4, figure 2)
•Nocturnal cough was persistent within patient
Figure 2