TY - JOUR T1 - Missing sputum samples are common in asthma intervention studies and successful collection at follow-up is related to improvement in clinical outcomes JF - ERJ Open Research JO - erjor DO - 10.1183/23120541.00612-2021 SP - 00612-2021 AU - Laurits Frøssing AU - Morten Hvidtfeldt AU - Alexander Silberbrandt AU - Asger Sverrild AU - Celeste Porsbjerg Y1 - 2022/01/01 UR - http://openres.ersjournals.com/content/early/2022/01/06/23120541.00612-2021.abstract N2 - With only modest agreement between airway- and systemic eosinophilia, biomarkers directly assessing the level and type of airway inflammation are becoming increasingly important, both for targeting treatment to the individual patient, as well as for assessing effect [1].Several factors significantly impact ability to produce a sputum sample after an anti-inflammatory intervention and we argue that the widely used complete-case analysis is inappropriate for paired sputum-based outcome measures.FootnotesThis manuscript has recently been accepted for publication in the ERJ Open Research. It is published here in its accepted form prior to copyediting and typesetting by our production team. After these production processes are complete and the authors have approved the resulting proofs, the article will move to the latest issue of the ERJOR online. Please open or download the PDF to view this article.Conflict of interest: Laurits Frøssing has nothing to disclose.Conflict of interest: Morten Hvidtfeldt has nothing to disclose.Conflict of interest: Alexander Silberbrandt has nothing to disclose.Conflict of interest: Asger Sverrild has nothing to disclose.Conflict of interest: Celeste Porsbjerg has nothing to disclose. ER -