Asthma diagnosis and treatmentIgE antibody quantification and the probability of wheeze in preschool children
Section snippets
Study population
The Manchester Asthma and Allergy Study is an unselected population-based birth cohort study.12, 13 Subjects were recruited from the antenatal clinics within the first trimester of the pregnancy when all pregnant women were screened for eligibility. Both parents completed a questionnaire and skin prick testing to common inhalant allergens. Multiple births were excluded. Children were followed prospectively and attended review clinics at ages 3 and 5 years (±4 weeks). The study was approved by
Results
Of 1211 couples who initially agreed to take part, 1085 had a successful full-term pregnancy (>36 weeks of gestation; child did not need intensive care) and gave consent to a further follow-up. Of those, 128 were prenatally randomized to environmental control19, 20 (excluded from this analysis), and 957 children were followed in the observational cohort. Of the children in the observational cohort, 840 (87.8%) attended the 5-year follow-up. All of these children had questionnaire data, and 521
Discussion
Our observations confirm that sensitization to inhalant allergens is a risk factor for wheezing. However, we have extended this observation in demonstrating that the absolute specific IgE antibody levels offer more information than just the presence of specific IgE. We found total IgE to be a poorer predictor of wheeze than the sum of specific IgEs. In addition, increasing specific IgE antibody levels were associated with reduced lung function in preschool children. Our data also suggest that
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Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: L. Soderstrom is employed with Pharmacia Diagnostics AB. S. Ahlstedt is employed with Pharmacia Diagnostics AB. The rest of the authors have none to disclose.
Supported by Asthma UK grant number 01/012, Pharmacia Diagnostics and Moulton Charitable Trust.