Authors:
Holt P.
Authors notes:
Allergy, Immunity and Tolerance in Early Childhood. Amsterdam: Academic Press; 2016. p. 337-50.
Keywords:
Allergy, Asthma, Prevention
Abstract:
Recent studies from large international birth cohorts indicate that development of the major form of (atopic) asthma is initiated during infancy and/or the preschool years, and in a subset of children it progresses from intermittent and relatively mild disease to chronic/persistent asthma over the course of the school years.
It is becoming clear that the asthma phenotype exhibits a high level of plasticity for a number of years, presenting a temporal window of opportunity for prevention of development of chronic disease.
This review focuses first on the scientific rationale for early intervention aimed at asthma prophylaxis; second, it discusses therapeutic approaches currently available for testing as potential preventives, as well as emerging treatments likely to be available in the near future.