Research profile: Professor Anne Tattersfield

Professor Anne Tattersfield heads the department of respiratory medicine at the University of Nottingham.Professor Anne Tattersfield heads the department of respiratory medicine at the University of Nottingham.

Asthma UK is supporting her current research into respiratory medicine and approaches to treatment of asthma.

Why is asthma so interesting as a research issue?

Asthma is fascinating for many reasons. One is the question of why people get asthma and why, if you have certain genes, you are more likely to develop asthma if you live in a more affluent society. Despite many clues and potential environmental suspects the precise cause remains elusive. Asthma presents very differently in different patients – why?

My main research interest has been to understand better how drugs work in asthma. This can help our understanding of the mechanisms at work in asthma and helps to ensure that the very effective drugs now available are used optimally.

What do you enjoy most about your work?

I still enjoy the clinical challenges of seeing patients with asthma and trying to minimise the effects of the condition. I am particularly interested in how drugs work and in ensuring that they are used optimally, and I'm also interested in non-pharmacological aspects of management.

I enjoy trying to answer questions about the safety of the drugs we use, and trying to ensure that the drugs and doses we use give the best value to patients: that is, have the most benefit and least risk of side effects. These are simple questions, but designing studies to provide robust and relevant answers is far from simple, particularly if you want to take a long-term view.

I also enjoy discussions and debate with colleagues and encouraging research fellows to understand the possibilities, limitations and excitement of research.

How does Asthma UK help your research?

Asthma UK supported our recent study into the role of two complementary approaches to asthma, namely a breathing exercise that mimics pranayama – one aspect of yoga – and the Buteyko technique (Cooper et al Thorax 2003).

Although asthma is clearly an inflammatory disease I think it likely that a proportion of patients with asthma can be helped by breathing exercises, but these topics are difficult to study and as yet we aren't sure which patients benefit and what the best approach is. The Buteyko technique caused some reduction in some symptoms, although other aspects of asthma control were not helped, and Buteyko training is expensive. We are now looking at alternative breathing exercises that might benefit people with asthma.

Asthma UK is now supporting a study that I'm carrying out with my colleagues Tim Harrison and Janet Oborne in Nottingham to answer an important practical question – does quadrupling the dose of an inhaled steroid when asthma starts to deteriorate prevent more serious exacerbations and the need for steroid tablets. We need to study 500 patients to answer this question.

What do you hope to achieve as a result of your research?

I hope to provide information that will help to improve the management of asthma. Because asthma is so common, any improvement in our ability to treat asthma can have large benefits.


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