LAUSR

The December issue of Breathe focuses on biomarkers in respiratory diseases [1–4]. Biomarkers are measurable indicators of the presence, severity or type of a disease. They can help us understand the cause, phenotype, progression or regression, prognosis, or outcome of treatment of a disease. Biomarkers hold the promise of personalised medicine, which aims to tailor treatments to individual patients based on their biomarker profile and, by doing so, reduce the harms from ineffective treatments and increase the benefits from effective treatments. Biomarkers to describe disease phenotypes and to determine optimal treatments based on these phenotypes are receiving substantial attention in the current respiratory research literature. The search for clinically useful biomarkers that impact clinical decision-making is, however, challenging, and the vast majority of biomarkers are failing at the initial verification and validation stages before they enter clinical practice [5]. The December issue of Breathe focuses on biomarkers in respiratory diseases: read the introductory editorial by Chief Editor @ClaudiaCDobler http://bit.ly/36nzAiW