Childhood asthma is one of the most serious health concerns for parents, who feel paralysed with fear as they watch their children struggle for breath. Despite knowing that it affects the wellness of millions of children around the world, parents find it a very worrying condition, and most of them pray that their child grows out of their asthma.
Childhood asthma is quite common, but up until now it has been impossible to tell whether your child has the kind of asthma that they will grow out of, or the kind that will affect their wellbeing throughout their life. Now, a new genetic test could help to predict whether or not your child’s asthma is likely to turn into a lifelong condition.
The new genetic test is the result of a 40 year-long study into asthma, which found that half of children grow out of their asthma by the time they reach adolescence. Now the study has managed to identify genetic factors which increase the likelihood of childhood asthma becoming a lifelong condition by up to 36 percent.
This study could show that genetic testing is useful to predict which children are at risk of developing a long-term condition and which can feel reassured in the knowledge that it is a limited condition that they are going to grow out of in a few years’ time.
Experts stress, however, that this research has not yet produced a test that is advanced enough to be used in day-to-day medical practice, although this is obviously the hope for the future, as tests could well be developed to help assess the risk.