Clinical phenotypes associated with impaired response to treatment in children with acute asthma

Abstract

Asthma comprises inflammation of the airways, characterised by reversible airways obstruction, airway hyper-responsiveness (AHR) and bronchial spasm (Dougherty & Fahy, 2009). Asthma, particularly childhood asthma, is a National Health Priority costing Australia >$606 million annually. First symptoms of asthma usually occur during the first few years of childhood. Of those, a large proportion of children become symptom free by the time they reach school age and the rest continue to develop persistent asthma throughout childhood (Martinez & Vercelli, 2013). This project aims to predict the treatment response by identifying a specific group of children with acute wheezing and asthma who do not respond the treatment well and are likely to relapse and re-present to hospital. The recurrence of hospital presentations was further examined to see whether it is associated with specific asthma phenotypes and potential risk factors.