Rhinovirus Infection and Asthma in Childhood and Adolescents

Although asthma is likely to be a heterogeneous disease or syndrome, three factors and/or events repetitively emerge for their ability to significantly influence asthma inception in the first decade of life: immune response aberrations, which appear to be defined best by the concept of cytokine dysregulation; lower respiratory tract infections (in particular RSV); and some form of gene by environment interaction that needs to occur at a critical time period in the development of the immune system or the lung. It remains to be firmly established, however, how any one or all of these factors, either independently or interactively, influence the development of childhood asthma. Thus, our efforts to determine and define the importance of these three factors to asthma pathogenesis are the focus and goal of this current grant application.