Let’s read an article a month – January 2021

The cropped screenshot of the first page of the article. It also includes the URL or link to the article.

Every month I try to read an open-access article. After reading the article, I share the tittle and associated link with my followers. This is to encourage clinicians to read articles, stay up to date, and continue to grow.


This month I found a great piece to share with you.  This one falls under asthma and biologic treatments. The objective of this paper is to “ [describe] the effects of alarmins and [discuss] the potential role of anti-alarmins in the context of existing biologics “ (p1 ).

Anti-alarmins in asthma: targeting the airway epithelium with next-generation biologics

By: C. M. Porsbjerg, A. Sverrild, C. M. Lloyd, A. N. Menzies-Gow and E. H. Bel 

European Respiratory Journal 2020 56: 2000260; DOI: 10.1183/13993003.00260-2020

Link to the article: https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/56/5/2000260


Reasons you may find this article interesting 

  • Great review of inflammatory pathways in asthma (beginning on page 2).
  • An in-depth discussion of targeting the alarmins using biological therapies (beginning on page 6).  
  • Useful visualization to help put things in perspective ( Figure 1 on page 3 and Figure 2 on page 7). 

While I recommend you check out this article, I need to give you a heads-up. If you are not as familiar with asthma inflammatory pathways, you may need to dedicate more time to this piece.  Personally, I had to come back to it a few times.

Happy learning and reading!

Farzad Refahi

January 1st, 2021

Link to the blog post: https://respiratory.blog/lets-read-an-article-a-month-january-2021