Helping to prevent asthma in young children

Asthma UK has agreed to fund a critical research project to discover how to predict which young children who wheeze will go on to develop asthma.

The research will be undertaken by Dr Sejal Saglani, a senior lecturer and honorary consultant at Imperial College London, and an expert in children’s lung biology and medicine.

Although many small children develop wheezing, the majority of these children will grow out of their symptoms by the time they reach school age. However, around a third of wheezing children will develop asthma by the time they reach school, and many have the condition for the rest of their lives.

Currently, doctors have no way of knowing which of the wheezing pre-school children they see will develop asthma.

A test that can distinguish between wheezing children who will develop asthma and those that won’t would enable doctors to tailor the medication they give these children accordingly.

Children who are likely to develop asthma could be given stronger or more appropriate treatments to reduce their risk of developing the condition, and children unlikely to develop asthma would avoid unnecessary treatment.