Bronchiolitis All-study, SE-Norway What is the Optimal Inhalation Treatment for Children 0-12 Months With Acute Bronchiolitis?

Bronchiolitis is a common lower respiratory disease typically affecting infants and children generally younger than 2 years of age. The disease leads to hospital admissions, is a major cause for hospitalisation of young children and infants during winter epidemics, may be severe sometimes requiring ventilatory support and rarely death. The clinical disease as described by Court is characterised by nasal flaring, tachypnoea, dyspnoea, chest recessions, crepitations and sometimes sibiliations. Respiratory Syncytial virus is the most common cause, but also other respiratory vira may cause the disease. Bronchiolitis is a well known risk factor of asthma development in childhood1,2.

Management is generally supportive, whereas symptom reducing therapy is debated with no international consensus. Furthermore, there are many unresolved questions related to the prognosis of bronchiolitis, its role in development of chronic lung disease in particular regarding the association between early bronchiolitis and asthma development. The present project will particularly focus on: 1)Treatment efficacy related to various outcomes during active disease, 2) retrospectively assess treatment efficacy in relation to later development of allergic disease, 3) assess the role between different vira and asthma prognosis as well as 4) identify possible prognostic factors involved in the progression from bronchiolitis to further airways disease.