Respiration day - Chronic airway diseases and their comorbidities

Razionale scientifico

The aim of the 2026 Edition of "Respiration Day" is to provide the view of where the Respiratory clinicians and researchers are and where they are heading in the field of chronic respiratory diseases, particularly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, bronchiectasis and their comorbidities, and the role of small airway diseases in these respiratory diseases. The main aim of the meeting is educational, and the speakers have been specifically invited to translate in their lectures the most important recent discoveries to the potential improvement of clinical practice. A significant proportion of time (40%) will be devoted to discussion. The Meeting is divided in 5 sessions. The first session will focus on the recent advancements in COPD and its comorbidities, and in particular the first lecture will focus on the need to better characterize the different phenotypes included under the umbrella of the term COPD, both in term of etiology and clinical presentation, early diagnosis, and active search of multimorbidity to improve the management of individual patients (Bhatt et al, 2025; Celli et al, 2022). The second lecture will be devoted to novel therapies for COPD, particularly the biologics, with the aim of improved comprehensive and personalized management (Agusti et al, 2025). The third lecture will focus on the major cardiovascular risk in patients with COPD, both in stable and during and in the aftermath of exacerbations of respiratory symptoms (Gale et al, 2025). The second session will focus on asthma as a disease of both central and peripheral airways (Siddiqui et mal, 2026), the need of integration of traditional pharmacological inhalation treatments with systemic agents and/or biologics (Porsbjerg et al, 2023), the third the ongoing research focused on mechanisms rather than clinical treatable traits (Gaberino et al, 2026). The third session will be devoted to the importance and impact of small airways dysfunction for chronic airway diseases, and in particular on the fundamental role of inhalers but also of their environmental impact, its complex impact on respiratory and non-respiratory components of chronic airway diseases, and last, but not least, how can AI help us to understand the role of small airways dysfunction. The fourth session will be devoted to the novel discoveries in the field of pathology of chronic airway diseases, and particularly the importance of mucus plugs, and mucociliary clearance. Finally the fifth session will be devoted to bronchiectasis that in the last 15 years has been discovered to represent not only a treatable trait of other chronic airway diseases but also an independent treatable disease (Burgel and Mall, 2026; Chalmer et al, 2025).

Programma

Responsabili del corso

• Gaetano Caramori

  Responsabile scientifico

  Specializzazione: Biologia Molecolare e Patologia / Malattie dell'Apparato Respiratorio

  Struttura: Università degli Studi di Parma, Italy

  Ruolo: Professore Ordinario di Malattie dell'Apparato Respiratorio presso il Dipartimento di Medicina e Chirurgia (DIMEC)

• Dario Olivieri

  Responsabile scientifico

  Specializzazione: Tisiologia / Malattie Respiratorie

  Struttura: Università degli Studi di Parma, Italy

  Ruolo: Docente presso la Scuola di Specializzazione in Malattie Respiratorie e Dottorato di Ricerca in Fisiopatologia Respiratoria

Relatori e docenti

• Alvar Agusti

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Respiratory Medicine

  Struttura: University of Barcelona and Hospital Clinic, Barcelona, Spain

  Ruolo: Professor of Medicine at the University of Barcelona and senior consultant at Hospital Clinic

• Stefano Aliberti

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Malattie dell'Apparato Respiratorio

  Struttura: Humanitas University, Milan, Italy

  Ruolo: Direttore del Programma di Fellowship in Malattie dell'Apparato Respiratorio, Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche

• Surya Bhatt

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Internal Medicine / Pulmonary, Allergy & Critical Care Medicine

  Struttura: University of Alabama, Birmingham, USA

  Ruolo: Professor of Medicine

• Matteo Bonini

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Medicina dello Sport / Malattie dell'Apparato Respiratorio

  Struttura: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Roma, Italy

  Ruolo: Professore Associato in Malattie dell'Apparato Respiratorio

• Guy Brusselle

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Respiratory Medicine

  Struttura: Ghent University, Belgium

  Ruolo: Head of the Department of Respiratory Medicine and Professor of Medicine

• Pierre Regis Burgel

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Respiratory Medicine

  Struttura: Université Paris-Cité and Cochin Hospital, Paris, France

  Ruolo: Professor of Respiratory Medicine

• Bartolome Celli

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Internal Medicine

  Struttura: Tufts and Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

  Ruolo: Professor of Medicine

• Filippo Crea

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Malattie dell'Apparato Cardiovascolare

  Struttura: Università Cattolica e Policlinico Gemelli di Roma, Italy

  Ruolo: Professore Ordinario e Direttore del Dipartimento di Scienze Cardiovascolari e Toraciche del Policlinico Gemelli di Roma

• Alejandro A. Diaz

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Respiratory Medicine

  Struttura: Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

  Ruolo: Associate professor of Medicine

• John Fahy

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Internal Medicine

  Struttura: Airway Clinical Research Center at UCSF and UCSF, San Francisco, USA

  Ruolo: Director of the Airway Clinical Research Center at UCSF and Professor of Medicine at UCSF

• Klaus Rabe

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Respiratory Medicine

  Struttura: University of Kiel, Germany

  Ruolo: Professor of Pulmonary Medicine

• Michal Shteinberg

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Respiratory Medicine

  Struttura: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

  Ruolo: MD, PhD Professor (Associate)

• Omar Usmani

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Respiratory Medicine

  Struttura: National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College London & Royal Brompton Hospital, London, UK

  Ruolo: Professor of Respiratory Medicine at NHLI Imperial College London, Consultant Physician at Royal Brompton Hospital, Clinical Director of Respiratory Trials at ICRRU

• Maarten Van Den Berge

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Respiratory Medicine

  Struttura: University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands

  Ruolo: Professor and Pulmonary Physician

• Erika Von Mutius

  Relatore

  Specializzazione: Paediatrics

  Struttura: Helmholtz Zentrum München, Research Center for Environmental Health, Munich, Germany

  Ruolo: Head of Department Environmental Health

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