Treatable Traits is a personalised medicine strategy for the management of chronic airway diseases. At the core of the Treatable Traits concept is the recognition that not all people with airway diseases are the same, and recognising the complex nature that any one person can have multiple traits, but not all traits are present in each person with severe asthma. Within individuals clinical, biological and functional presentation of diseases vary. This is often referred to as heterogeneity.
Treatable traits are phenotypic or endotypic characteristics which can include comorbidities (such as anxiety, vocal cord dysfunction and reflux), risk factors (such as smoking and bone density) and self-management skills (such as adherence and inhaler technique). To be considered a trait each characteristic must be clinically relevant, identifiable and measurable using validated trait identification markers, and treatable. Treatable Traits are recognised within three domains: pulmonary traits, extrapulmonary traits and behavioural/risk (McDonald et al. 2019).
