Chronic respiratory diseases are major contributors to the global burden of disease. While understanding of these diseases has improved, treatment guidelines have continued to rely on severity and exacerbation-based approaches. A new personalised approach, termed the “treatable traits” approach, has been suggested to address the limitations of the existing treatment strategies. We aim to systematically review the current evidence regarding treatable traits in chronic respiratory diseases and to identify gaps in the current literature. We searched the PubMed and Embase databases and included studies on treatable traits and chronic respiratory diseases. We then extracted information on prevalence, prognostic implications, treatment options and benefits from these studies. A total of 58 papers was included for review. The traits identified were grouped into five broad themes: physiological, biochemical, psychosocial, microbiological, and comorbidity traits. Studies have shown advantages of the treatable traits paradigm in the clinical setting. However, few randomised controlled trials have been conducted. Findings from our review suggest that multidisciplinary management with therapies targeted at treatable traits has the potential to be efficacious when added to the best practices currently implemented. This paradigm has the potential to improve the holistic care of chronic respiratory diseases.

Introduction: Suicide is a pressing psychiatric concern worldwide with no established biomarker. While there is some evidence of the clinical utility of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in assessing and predicting suicidality, no systematic review of such evidence has been conducted to date. Therefore, this review aimed to systematically review and gather evidence from existing studies that used fNIRS signals to assess suicidality and its associated changes in the brain, and those that examined how such signals correlated with suicide symptomatology.Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library databases were used in a systematic literature search for English-language articles published between 2000 and December 19, 2020 that focused on the utility of fNIRS for (i) assessing suicidality and its associated changes in the brain, and (ii) correlating with suicide symptomatology. Studies were included if they utilised fNIRS to evaluate variations in fNIRS-measured cerebral hemodynamic responses in patients with different mental disorders (e.g., major depressive disorder, schizophrenia), as well as in healthy controls, of any age group. Quality of evidence was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa quality assessment scale.Results: A total of 7 cross-sectional studies were included in this review, all of which had acceptable quality. Across all studies, fNIRS demonstrated reduced cerebral hemodynamic changes in suicidal individuals when compared to non-suicidal individuals. One study also demonstrated the potential of fNIRS signals in correlating with the severity of suicidality.Conclusions: This review provides a comprehensive, updated review of evidence supporting the clinical utility of fNIRS in the assessment and prediction of suicidality. Further studies involving larger sample sizes, standardised methodology, and longitudinal follow-ups are needed.