# First Steps of Asthma Management with a Personalized Ontology Model
## 1 Introduction  
Asthma is a chronic respiratory disease in which the lining of the lung airways becomes swollen and narrowed thus reducing the airflow into and out of the lung. This airflow obstruction can cause symptoms such as coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, and chest tightness. The severity and the frequency of asthma exacerbations differ from one patient to another [1, 2]. Asthma usually appears during childhood; however, some adults can also develop asthma [3]. Estimations show that asthma affects more than 339 million people worldwide [2]. In Canada, more than 3.8 million individuals [4], who are over one year of age, are asthmatics. Asthma can affect the quality of life of an asthma patient as well as his/her work productivity and psychological health [1]. There are two phenotypes of asthma: extrinsic or allergic asthma and intrinsic or non-allergic asthma. Allergic asthma is triggered after the inhalation of specific allergens: it usually develops early in life and is usually accompanied or preceded by atopic diseases such as allergic rhinitis, a food allergy, and atopic eczema [5, 6]. Atopy is the genetic susceptibility of an allergic reaction being provoked after an exposure to an allergen [7]. On the other hand, in non-allergic asthma, no exogenous allergens can be identified, and this phenotype is characterized by a late onset. Allergic asthma is considered to be more responsive to treatment than non-allergic asthma, and it is the most common form of the disease [8]. An asthmatic response is provoked by an allergy in 75-80% of all asthmatic cases [9, 10, 11]. Asthma exacerbations are often triggered upon the exposure to environmental allergens or irritants (e.g., indoor and outdoor allergens and pollution), tobacco smoke, workplace irritants (e.g., food derivatives, fumes, chemical products, animal products, etc.), changes in the weather conditions or viral respiratory infections [1, 2, 6, 7, 9].  
Over the past decades, asthma problems have been of particular interest in bioinformatics projects. However, asthma is a complex disease where multiple aspects need to be tackled to control its complications. Each asthma patient experiences such conditions uniquely; therefore, dynamic protection standards must be developed for each patient. Asthma patients need constant care to protect them from various environmental irritants and allergens. For example, dust mites, animal dander, humidity, extreme temperature, precipitation, some weed pollens and molds, and air pollutants [2; 7; 9], such as particulate matter PM\({}_{2.5}\), PM\({}_{10}\), O\({}_{3}\), NO\({}_{2}\), SO\({}_{2}\), and CO, pose potentially serious and life-threatening risks to asthma patients. On the other hand, food allergies can increase the bronchial hyperreactivity in asthmatic patients as a part of the anaphylactic reaction. Although a food allergy is triggered after the ingestion of certain food derivatives, inhaled airborne allergens such as flour, egg allergens, nuts, soybean, tea dust, fish, and seafood may induce asthmatic reactions [6].  
This paper proposes a first step to design an ontology-based approach to evaluate the health status of asthma patients. The originality of the proposed approach resides in the dynamic control of thresholds that govern the triggers of asthma. This paper builds a formal knowledge base of the relevant parameters and their relationships that can be used to monitor the environmental risk factors and food allergens depending on the medical profile of the patient. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we review existing tele-monitoring systems and ontology-based models in the asthma domain. Section 3 describes our expert rules ontology to deal with asthma. Section 4 implements the system and evaluate its result. Finally, this work is concluded in Section 5.