ABSTRACT
This chapter contains an account of how the perception of the pathophysiology of asthma has changed in, the lessons learned from trials of new therapies in real life, and a brief pointer toward future research directions. Asthma may be clinically defined as a syndrome of variable airway obstruction and bronchial hyperresponsiveness. Thus, omalizumab has the propensity to block the full range of the potential immunological functions of Immunoglobulin in asthma. Consequently, it seems justified to state that it has so far not been possible to associate etiological and clinical subdivisions of asthma with reproducible and discernible variabilities in the histopathology of asthma. As stated, the traditional pathogenesis of asthma discussed herein does not appear to explain the patient variability of the disease progression, its severity, or the response to different therapies. As with inflammatory cells, however, the evidence for the involvement of the cytokines in the pathophysiology of human asthma, although extensive, has remained largely circumstantial.
