What do we know already and what have we been doing?

Many young children wheeze, usually when they have a cold or chest infection. Most of them will not go on to develop proper asthma.

We have asked mothers a great number of questions about their child's wheezing. We do this each time we interview them. Because 'wheezing' may mean different things to different people and because children with asthma may also cough or be chesty we have also asked questions about these symptoms.

What have we found so far?

It's difficult to know whether or not a child is definitely going to have asthma until they are around five or six years old - and sometimes older. The Ashford children are just turning eight so we should soon be able to get a reasonable picture. In the meantime here is a diagram which summarises the wheezing of all the children through their first five and a half years:

Wheezing up 50 the age of 5½ never occastionally/always

We would like to know whether 'asthma' later in childhood can be predicted by the type and frequency of wheeziness in the first years of life. This is quite a complicated matter and one which we haven't yet completed.

Summary points:

wheezing is more common in the first year (42% children wheeze) than the second (29%), third (27%), fourth (22%) and fifth year (18%)

40% of children do not wheeze at all by age 6

23% of children wheeze some time in their first two years of life, but not after

5% of children consistently wheeze at each age

DOCTORS DIAGNOSIS OF ASTHMA

When is a wheeze 'just a wheeze' and when is it 'asthma'? This is a tricky question but one we are very interested in. We have been looking at which children get a 'diagnosis' of asthma from their GP.

What did we do?

We searched through each child's medical record looking for details on diagnosis and treatments prescribed.

One in five (20%) of the Ashford children have had a GP diagnosis of asthma by the age of 6; a further 7% have had 'possible asthma'. This is the same for boys and girls, although boys were diagnosed earlier than girls (average age 22 months for boys, 30 months for girls).

Frequency of "asthma" diagnosis recorded in the medical notes

Many children in infancy get infections that cause them to wheeze but this does not
necessarily mean they are asthmatic. Children with wheezing very early in life were less likely to have this called 'asthma' than were children who wheezed later on.

Almost half (43%) of all children have had one or more prescriptions for Salbutamol (the asthma treatment sometimes called Ventolin). Only half of those children were diagnosed with 'asthma' by their GP. 17% of all children have had a prescription for an inhaled steroid (another, longer term treatment for asthma).

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