Introduction We aimed to assess the level of daily physical activity and investigate the relationship with asthma control, mood disturbance and health status in patients with severe asthma.

Methods Patients with severe asthma (step 4–5 of the British Thoracic Society guidelines), MRC dyspnoea grade ≥2, were recruited from specialists in difficult-to-treat asthma. All patients were asked to wear SensewareTM activity monitor for seven days during waking hours with a minimum data requirement of eight hours per day for four days.¹ Participants completed the Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire (CRQ) and Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (AQLQ). Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to assess the relationship between physical activity, asthma control, mood disturbance and health status.

Results 45 participants (24 female, mean [SD] age 54 [13] yr, BMI 32 [7] kg/m²) provided written consent and physical activity data was available for 41 patients. The mean (SD) number of days of physical activity data available was 6.1 [1.9] days. The mean (SD) number of steps per day was 5258 [3030] with only 84 [82] active minutes. Only 16 patients achieved any moderate physical activity (3–4.5 metabolic equivalents [METS]) and for less than six minutes per day.

The mean [SD] ACQ was 13.6 [6.1], HADS anxiety and depression domains 6.5 [4.9] and 4.5 [2.8], respectively, CRQ Dyspnoea domain 3.4 [1.5], AQLQ environmental, symptoms, activity and emotional domains of 4.9 [1.4], 5.0 [1.4], 5.0 [1.2] and 4.9 [1.5], respectively. Table 1 shows the correlations between steps per day, and measures of asthma control, mood disturbance, and health status.

Conclusions Patients with severe asthma demonstrated low levels of physical activity but there were no relationships with asthma control, mood disturbance or health status.

Reference

1. Demeyers H, et al. Chest 2014;146(2):318–27.