Asthma: developments in targeted therapy

Despite advances in long-term management, asthma remains a health problem in industrialized countries. Even if the updated guidelines continues to emphasize that the most effective medications for long-term asthma therapy are inhaled corticosteroids, the actual pharmacological therapies are unable to modify the natural course of ‘asthma history', so there is an urgent need for targeted, disease- modifying asthma treatments. The definition of the pathogenic mechanisms of asthma has opened the way to new therapeutic strategies. In the present article, we briefly discuss the past, present and particularly the future perspectives of targeted asthma therapies. However, it is now accepted that there are distinct asthma phenotypes, and that available therapeutic approaches may only interfere with some aspects of the disease process.