Asthma is remarkably heterogeneous, and there are multiple underlying inflammatory pathways and structural airway abnormalities that lead to symptomatic disease. Consequently, a current challenge in the field is to precisely characterize different types of asthma, with the goal of developing personalized approaches to therapy. In the current issue of the JCI, Dunican et al. developed a noninvasive way to assess airway dysfunction in asthma by measuring mucus accumulation using multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) and found that mucus plugging of small airways was remarkably common in subjects with severe asthma. This work highlights the importance of noninvasive imaging approaches in defining specific asthma subsets and guiding targeted therapies.

哮喘的异质性非常明显，并且存在多种潜在的炎症途径和结构性气道异常，从而导致症状性疾病。因此，该领域当前的挑战是精确地表征不同类型的哮喘，以开发个性化的治疗方法为目标。在当前的JCI中，Dunican等人。他开发了一种非侵入性方法，通过使用多探测器计算机断层扫描（MDCT）测量粘液积聚来评估哮喘中的气道功能障碍，并发现小气道粘液堵塞在重度哮喘患者中非常普遍。这项工作强调了无创成像方法在定义特定哮喘亚型和指导靶向治疗中的重要性。