“…In asthmatic patients, the numbers of circulating Fcs are in the normal range values when their disease, irrespective of its severity, is adequately controlled by the treatment they are receiving (Saunders et al, 2009;Bianchetti et al, 2012a; (Table 1). Greatly elevated blood Fc numbers are detectable in patients experiencing a spontaneous asthma exacerbation (Bellini et al, 2012;Isgrò et al, 2013a;Wang et al, 2015) and in patients with treatment-refractory severe disease (Saunders et al, 2009;Bianchetti et al, 2012a; or "chronic obstructive asthma" (Wang et al, 2008;2015), whose disease is scarcely controlled in spite of the intensive treatment with high doses of inhaled corticosteroids or oral corticosteroids in combination with bronchodilators (Table 1). Elevated numbers of circulating Fcs are consistently associated with the presence of airway (Saunders et al, 2009) or sputum fibrocytosis (Bellini et al, 2012) and ongoing inflammation, as reflected by sputum eosinophilia (Saunders et al, 2009;Bellini et al, 2012) and increased concentrations of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines in the sputum fluid phase (Bellini et al, 2012;Isgrò et al, 2013b).…”