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Asthma severity and atopy: how clear is the relationship?

W D Carroll1, W Lenney, F Child

  • 1Department of Child Health, Derbyshire Children's Hospital, Mickleover, Derby, UK.

Archives of Disease in Childhood
|January 31, 2006
PubMed

Insights

In children with asthma, greater atopy correlates with increased asthma severity. This includes higher immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels and skin prick test reactivity, impacting hospital admissions and treatment needs.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Allergy and Immunology
  • Respiratory Medicine
  • Genetics of Asthma

Background:

  • The link between asthma severity and atopy is complex and often inconsistent in research.
  • Previous studies frequently failed to establish significant correlations between clinical asthma severity or lung function and markers of atopic sensitization.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between increasing asthma severity and atopic sensitization in a pediatric asthma cohort.
  • To determine if atopic sensitization is a contributing factor to asthma severity in children.

Main Methods:

  • Recruited 400 children (aged 7-18 years) with asthma for a multicenter genetics study.
  • Collected detailed phenotypic data, including measures of asthma severity and atopic sensitization.
  • Employed multilevel models to analyze associations, accounting for individual and family-level variations.

Main Results:

  • Total serum IgE levels correlated with increased asthma severity scores, reduced FEV1, and greater airway obstruction.
  • Increased skin prick test reactivity to aeroallergens was associated with higher risk of hospital admission, inhaled steroid use, and airway obstruction.
  • These associations remained statistically significant after adjusting for age, gender, and birth order.

Conclusions:

  • In children with asthma, increasing levels of atopy are associated with greater asthma severity.
  • The specific associations between asthma severity, skin prick tests, and total serum IgE levels exhibit subtle differences.
Abstract

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