The G lobal Initiative for Asthma (GINA) and other
asthma management guidelines based on the GINA
guidelines have promoted remarkable improvement
in asthma management. 1-3 These guidelines, includ-ing the 2006 GINA guidelines (GINA 2006), require
the clinician to achieve current control of asthma and
decrease the r isk for future asthma exacerbation
rather than merely evaluate the severity of asthma. 4,5
Therefore, it is extremely important to evaluate
asthma control in e ach patient in order to use these
guidelines appropriately, and the G INA guidelines
provide the criteria for such e valuations.
The Asthma C ontrol Test (ACT), which was devel-oped in 2004, is a simple, self-administrated, and rap-idly completed assessment tool comprising 5 ques-tions.12 This tool is recognized as better for achieving
asthma control13-15 despite r equiring no lung function
tests. Several studies have shown that the ACT can
be an excellent predictor of asthma control as defined
by the G INA guidelines. 16-19 Although the J apanese
version of the ACT ( ACT-J) was introduced in 2006,
no similar analysis of the ACT-J has yet been per-formed.
In 1998, the Niigata Asthma Treatment Study
Group b egan conducting annual or b iennial surveys
to investigate various asthma control and manage-ment problems. 20-28 We analyzed data from the
questionnaire-based 2008 survey and r eported that
the ACT-J is both reliable and valid.29 In order to al-low e valuation of the ACT-J as a predictor of GINA
2006-defined asthma control in actual clinical prac-tice, the questions in the 2010 survey concerning the
criteria for asthma control were based on the GINA
2006 guidelines. Therefore, the present study used
data from the 2010 questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey to compare the ACT-J score and
GINA classification of asthma control and analyze the
usefulness of the ACT-J as a predictor of GINA 2006-defined asthma control.