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Outgrown asthma does not mean no airways inflammation

¹ Depts of Child Health and ² Clinical Biochemistry, The Queen's University of Belfast and ³ The Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, Belfast, UK

CORRESPONDENCE: M.D. Shields, The Dept of Child Health, The Queen's University of Belfast, The Institute of Clinical Science, Grosvenor Road, Belfast, BT12 6BJ, UK. Fax: 44 2890236455. E-mail: E-mail: m.shields@qub.ac.uk

Keywords: airways inflammation, asthma, eosinophils

Received: September 6, 2001
Accepted October 8, 2001

This study was supported by the National Asthma Campaign, UK and the Research and Development Office for Northern Ireland.

Although some asthmatic children seem to recover from their asthma, 30–80% develop asthma again in later life. The underlying risk factors are unknown. The hypothesis for this study was that children with apparently outgrown asthma would have underlying airway inflammation.

Nonbronchoscopic bronchoalveolar lavage was performed on normal children (n=35) and children who had wheezed previously (n=35).

Eosinophils were raised in the lavage fluid of atopic children who had apparently outgrown asthma (median (interquartile range) 0.36 (0.05–0.74) compared to controls 0.10 (0–0.18), p=0.002). There was no relationship between length of remission and degree of airways eosinophilia.

Thus, there is persistent airways inflammation in some children with outgrown asthma and this may be a risk factor for future relapse.

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