Performance of the Pediatric Asthma Risk Score across Diverse Populations

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Allergy and Immunology
• Epidemiology
• Biostatistics

Background:

• Predicting childhood asthma is crucial for parents and for testing prevention strategies.
• The Pediatric Asthma Risk Score (PARS) was developed to identify early-life asthma risk.
• The generalizability of PARS across diverse populations was previously unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the generalizability and predictive performance of the Pediatric Asthma Risk Score (PARS) in diverse pediatric cohorts.
• To compare the predictive ability of PARS with the Asthma Predictive Index (API).

Main Methods:

• PARS was calculated for 5634 children aged 0-3 years using six factors.
• Asthma development was assessed between 5-10 years of age.
• Area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) was used to measure predictive ability across varied demographics and definitions.

Main Results:

• PARS demonstrated a robust predictive ability with an AUC of 0.76 across 10 diverse cohorts.
• PARS performance remained consistent across different ethnicities, sexes, cohort types, and enrollment decades.
• PARS showed comparable performance to API in identifying high-risk children, but API missed 31% of moderate-risk cases.

Conclusions:

• The Pediatric Asthma Risk Score (PARS) is a generalizable tool for estimating asthma risk in children from diverse backgrounds.
• PARS provides reliable risk assessment, aiding in early identification and management of pediatric asthma.
• The study validates PARS as a robust predictor of asthma in early childhood across varied populations.