Towards improving the accuracy of diagnosing asthma in early childhood

Objectives: Early and correct diagnosis of asthma in wheezing children is essential for early treatment and prevention of under-or over-treatment. The aim was to study whether combining frequency and age of onset of wheezing illness with respiratory and atopic morbidity at age 0–6 years and sociodemographic parameters for asthma might be helpful for the general practitioner to diagnose asthma early and accurately.Methods: Birth cohort, mean follow-up 20 years (SD 4.8) in general practice. The outcome, adolescent asthma, was analysed in relation to wheezing and non-wheezing respiratory and personal and familial atopic morbidity. All diagnoses were from the Continuous Morbidity Registration of the Department of General Practice of the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands.Results: 1586 (64%) of the children could be followed. Adolescent asthma occurred in 6.4%. There were indications for under-and over-diagnosis of asthma at age 0–6 years. Non-recurrent wheezing (only one episode) and recurrent wheezing (...