The recent advances of asthma-chronic obstructive pulmonary disease overlap / 中国医师杂志

ABSTRACT

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease overlap (ACO) is a hot topic in recent years. Although the precise definition of ACO is still controversial, scholars have found that the patients with overlapping features of asthma and COPD have a worse prognosis and increased medical cost than those with asthma or COPD alone. Thus, there is a big challenge to have a better understanding and to manage these patients in clinical practice. To strengthen awareness of this type of patients, the Global initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) and Global initiative for asthma (GINA) in 2014 named them as " Asthma Chronic Obstructive Lung Overlap Syndrome" (ACOS), which was further revised to the Asthma Chronic Obstructive Lung Overlap (ACO) in the follow-up GINA guidelines (2017). In the updated version, it emphasized that ACO was not a separate disease. However, although the research on ACO has increased significantly in recent years, there are still many controversies, which includes the definition, diagnostic criteria and treatment therapies. In this review, we provide the recent advances in the diagnosis and an overview of available treatment for of ACO.