Simple new tool allows primary caregivers to detect young kids at high risk of asthma

A team of researchers working with the CHILD Cohort Study (CHILD) has developed a simple new symptom-based screening tool that detects asthma risk in children as young as two years of age.

The efficacy of the tool — the CHILDhood Asthma Risk Tool, or CHART — is detailed in a study published in the highly influential Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

“Asthma affects nearly 330 million people worldwide, carries a heavy healthcare cost, and is the leading cause of hospitalization among kids in Canada — especially kids under five,” comments co-senior author Dr. Padmaja Subbarao, who is a respirologist and CRC Tier 1 Chair in Pediatric Asthma and Lung health at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the Director of CHILD. She also a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto and an Adjunct Professor in Respirology and Medicine at McMaster University.

“Earlier detection of this condition will allow doctors to treat kids sooner, so they will suffer less and avoid going to the hospital, thus also lowering costs to the healthcare system.”

“One reason asthma often goes undetected in young children is because most conventional asthma tests are difficult to perform in children, time consuming and invasive, involving skin pricks and blood-taking, so many patients and doctors choose to avoid them,” notes the study’s co-first author, Myrtha E Reyna-Vargas, who is an M.Sc. and a biostatistician at SickKids. “Other conventional tests can also require appointments with specialists and the use of specialized equipment to test lung function, with associated costs.”

CHART categorizes children’s risk of future asthma and persistent symptoms as ‘High,’ ‘Moderate’ or ‘Low,’ based on information reported before age three. The tool recommends follow-up actions for each group.

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