Bacterial immunotherapy of childhood bronchial asthma

In everyday practice, we usually encounter two types of childhood asthma, as regards etiology. On the one hand, primary allergic bacterial asthma and on the other, primary allergic extrinsic asthma; it is rare to encounter other types of asthma in infancy. Our point of vieew, as previously expressed elsewhere, is that the bacterial or infective factor is the most important etiologically. For this reason, we consider of major importance not only antibiotic treatment of the causative agent, but also immunotherapy with bacterial vaccines. Eighty patients were studied, 48 boys and 32 girls, aged between 2 and 10 years at the time immunotherapy was started. All had been diagnosed as having bronchial asthma of exclusively bacterial etiology, with or without associated paranasal sinusitis. In order to provide an objective estimate and evaluation of the efficacy of immunotherapy, the parents of the patients were interviewed and asked to complete the questionnaire shown in figure 1. There were 46 patients whose progress was classified as very good, amounting to 57.5%, 23 patients, or 28.7% had good results. The sume of these two groups was 69 cases, amounting to 86.2%. The remainder (fair, poor, did not complete treatment) amounted to 13.8% or 11 cases. In this last group, the highest proportion made fair progress, with 8 cases (10%). As far as tolerance to bacterial immunotherapy is concerned, in 47 cases, or 58%, no reactions occurred, while in 33 cases, or 41% of the total, side effects were observed. We should like to repeat once again that, on the basis of our results up to now, we consider the administration of appropriate bacterial immunotherapy essential as an etiological treatment in this type of asthma.