Biomarkers in respiratory diseases

Extract

The December issue of Breathe focuses on biomarkers in respiratory diseases [1–4]. Biomarkers are measurable indicators of the presence, severity or type of a disease. They can help us understand the cause, phenotype, progression or regression, prognosis, or outcome of treatment of a disease. Biomarkers hold the promise of personalised ­medicine, which aims to tailor treatments to ­individual patients based on their biomarker profile and, by doing so, reduce the harms from ineffective treatments and increase the benefits from effective treatments. Biomarkers to describe disease ­phenotypes and to determine optimal treatments based on these phenotypes are ­receiving ­substantial attention in the current respiratory research literature. The search for clinically useful biomarkers that impact clinical decision-making is, however, challenging, and the vast majority of biomarkers are failing at the initial verification and validation stages before they enter clinical practice [5].