Serum periostin is not related to asthma predictive index

In contrast to adult asthmatic patients, studies on the role of serum periostin levels in schoolchildren with asthma are still conflictive, and very few studies have been performed in pre-schoolers. The aim of this study was to compare serum periostin levels in recurrent wheezer pre-schoolers according to their asthma predictive index (API) condition.

We performed a case-control study enrolling pre-schoolers with recurrent wheezing episodes (>3 episodes confirmed by physician) presented at one paediatric clinic in Santiago, Chile. The population was divided according to stringent API criteria into positive or negative.

In a one-year period, 60 pre-schoolers were enrolled. After excluding 12 (due to not fulfilment of inclusion criteria or refusal of blood sample extraction), 48 remaining pre-schoolers (27 males, age range from 24 to 71 months) completed the study; 34 were API positive and 14 were API negative. There were no significant differences in demographics between groups. The level of serum periostin levels for pre-schoolers with positive API and negative API were (median 46.7 [25.5-83.1] and 67.5 [20.5-131.8], p=0.9, respectively). The area under the curve for the serum periostin levels for predict positive API was 0.5, 95% CI [0.29-0.70], p=0.9. No significant correlation between serum periostin levels and peripheral blood eosinophils was found.

Serum periostin levels were no significantly different between wheezer pre-schoolers with positive and negative API. More studies are needed to confirm this finding.