The natural history of asthma and wheezing illnesses from birth to adolescence: Determinants of the remission of asthma

我们的目标是发现与青春期哮喘缓解相关的因素。这可能导致制定干预措施，以解决或最大限度地减少哮喘症状。大多数哮喘开始于儿童时期，但尽管进行了密集的研究工作，哮喘的病因仍然难以捉摸。相当大比例的哮喘儿童似乎在青少年时期长大后症状消失了。通过专注于这段童年时期的事件，我们希望找出那些不再患有哮喘的儿童和那些持续哮喘的儿童之间的重要差异。我们将研究一组既定的儿童(ALSPAC研究)，在这些儿童中，我们拥有关于早期生活环境和症状的广泛信息。我们将研究参与者经历青春期时哮喘的进展情况，并将其与他们生活方式的各个方面(如饮食、吸烟和锻炼)联系起来。一个与哮喘相关的基因变异的不断发展的数据库也将使我们能够找出环境因素是否与特定的基因相互作用导致哮喘的持续或缓解。目前还没有发现阻止哮喘发展的干预措施。在这项研究中似乎有利于哮喘解决的暴露将被发展为干预研究，以测试一旦哮喘症状确立，这些暴露是否显示出帮助解决哮喘症状的希望。

We aim to discover factors associated with the resolution of asthma during adolescence. This may lead to the development of interventions that will resolve or minimise asthma symptoms. Most asthma begins in childhood but, despite intensive research efforts, the causes of asthma remain elusive. A substantial proportion of children with asthma appear to outgrow their symptoms during teenage years. By concentrating on events during this period of childhood, we hope to identify important differences between children who outgrow their asthma and those in whom it persists.We will study an established cohort of children (the ALSPAC study) in whom we have extensive information about early life environment and symptoms. We will study the progression of asthma as the participants go through puberty and link this to aspects of their lifestyle (such as diet, smoking, and exercise). An evolving database of variations in genes associated with asthma will also allow us to find out if environmental factors interact with particular genes to cause persistence or resolution of asthma.No interventions have been discovered that prevent the development of asthma. Exposures that appear to favour asthma resolution in this study will be developed into intervention studies to test whether these show promise in helping to resolve asthma symptoms once they have become established.