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Advances in pediatric asthma during 2014 reviewed

Several advancements in diagnosing and preventing asthma in adolescents and children were publicized in 2014, including new techniques to assess asthma control.

Stanley J. Szefler, MD, of the Children’s Hospital Colorado, reviewed a set of studies of pediatric and adult asthma from 2014 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and released what he viewed as some of the important advances in pediatric asthma last year.

Stanley J. Szefler

Among those advances were an increased risk for childhood asthma appearing in maternal secondhand smoke exposure as well as an association of winter birth in inner-city children with asthma and an increased risk for food allergen sensitization.

Another study Szefler highlighted included the indication that environmental exposures during the prenatal period and early childhood years increased the risk for asthma.

Szefler also wrote that the next 10 years may bring the development and release of new immunomodulators to address specific pathways. He cited four developments that likely will occur during this time frame:

• it will take time to conduct studies on immunomodulators in adult patients before the focus slowly moves toward children;
• immunomodulators will be expensive due to their selectivity;
• the identification of adverse effects will take time and be contingent on extended use; and
• immunomodulators will be administered through the parenteral route.

“Significant advances have been made in the past 10 years in defining optimal asthma control, as well as patients at risk for asthma exacerbations,” Szefler wrote. “We now have greater insight into the limitations of our available treatments and variable treatment response. We seek new strategies for intervention that will fill those gaps in disease management.”

Disclosure: Szefler reports receiving consulting fees from Boehringer Ingelheim and Genentech, consulting fees and research support from GlaxoSmithKline, consulting and lecture fees from Merck, and a patent with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s CARE Network.