Asthma-COPD Overlap in Clinical Practice (ACO_CP 2023): Toward Precision Medicine

Asthma and COPD have characteristic symptoms, yet patients with both are prevalent. Despite this, there is currently no globally accepted definition for the overlap between asthma and COPD, commonly referred to as asthma-COPD overlap (ACO). Generally, ACO is not considered a distinct disease or symptom from either clinical or mechanistic perspectives. However, identifying patients who present with both conditions is crucial for guiding clinical therapy. Similar to asthma and COPD, ACO patients are heterogeneous and presumably have multiple underlying disease processes. The variability of ACO patients led to the establishment of multiple definitions describing the condition's essential clinical, physiological, and molecular characteristics. ACO comprises numerous phenotypes, which affects the optimal medication choice and can serve as a predictor of disease prognosis. Various phenotypes of ACO have been suggested based on host factors including but not limited to demographics, symptoms, spirometric findings, smoking history, and underlying airway inflammation. This review provides a comprehensive clinical guide for ACO patients to be used in clinical practice based on the available limited data. Future longitudinal studies must evaluate the stability of ACO phenotypes over time and explore their predictive powers to facilitate a more precise and effective management approach.

Clinical guide for women with mental health problems during the perinatal period

Pregnancy and childbirth have various effects on the physical as well as mental aspects of women. Therefore, appropriate considerations must be given to the mental health of pregnant women. The Guideline Review Committee of the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology launched a liaison meeting for the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology and the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, with a view to creating a "Clinical guide for women with mental health problems during the perinatal period" by cooperation of these two fields. After repeated discussions with input from both academic societies, they jointly formulated the "Clinical guide for women with mental health problems during the perinatal period: Overview" in May 2020, and reported its "Detailed Contents" in April 2021. We hope that this guide, which is the English overview of the detailed guide, will contribute to the mental health of pregnant women, facilitating healthy pregnancies and childbirth.

Therapeutic drug monitoring in a developing nation: a clinical guide

Therapeutic drug monitoring is aimed at using drug concentration measurements to manage a patient's medication requirement and optimise clinical outcome, particularly in respect of drugs with narrow therapeutic index. Typically, immunoassay methods of various techniques are employed with the advantage of rapid turnaround time and ease of operation. The chromatographic methods are specific and cost effective, though more demanding and require technical expertise. The most crucial aspect of any therapeutic drug monitoring service is the expert clinical interpretation of drug concentration measurements taking into consideration individual pharmacokinetic variability in drug disposition across different populations. The setting up of a therapeutic drug monitoring service requires enormous resources, both in terms of equipment and trained personnel. This poses considerable constraints in developing countries due to limited scarce resources, coupled with ignorance among health practitioners on the relevance of therapeutic drug monitoring in clinical practice. Consequently, the need for advocacy, training and encouragement of health practitioners on the usefulness of therapeutic drug monitoring in enhancing patient care and overall clinical outcome in a developing country such as Nigeria can never be over-emphasised.