Asthma and allergies have become increasingly prevalent over the last few decades throughout the WHO European Region, with an average of more than 10% of children suffering from asthmatic symptoms. Asthma is indeed one of the most common chronic diseases and it is a complex and heterogeneous disorder where genetics and environment play an interacting role. In 1995/1996, the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) found that the average annual prevalence of self-reported asthma symptoms in children aged 13-14 years in Europe was 11.5%. Rates ranged from 2.6-4.4% in Albania, Romania, Georgia, Greece and the Russian Federation to 29.1% and 32.2% in Ireland and the United Kingdom, respectively. In the USA, asthma prevalence in children has increased 58% since 1980. Mortality has increased by 78%. More than 3 million people in the UK, including 1.3 million children, were diagnosed in 2002 as having asthma.
Since asthma is responsible for an important health and social burden (according to WHO, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases accounted for 4.2% of the total burden of disease in the European Region in 2000) a pan-European research programme on the gene-environment interactions and their effect on children's health has been created. As a preparatory work a small study focused
There has been a dramatic increase in paediatric asthma rates over the last few decades. Despite the development of effective treatment options and innovations in patient education and trigger avoidance, the chronicity of the disease in a considerable proportion of patients poses an important socio-economic problem. There is increasing evidence that an interplay of genetic predisposition and environmental exposure to a number of agents, including air pollutants, allergens and infectious agents, are operative in the inception and persistence of the clinical asthma phenotype. Therefore, future research has to be performed with large cohorts that are appropriately genotyped, and their environment will then need to be monitored in relation to all possible environmental risk factors. Given the current limited research funding possibilities in a number of European countries, it may be necessary to direct and organise such research activities on a European level.
This fast-track study is aimed at the identification of the amount of on-going research on asthma-related topics and the allocation of funding for such research. It focuses on EU25 countries and is restricted, as much as possible, to research on genetics and environmental factors in paediatric asthma.
02/2004 - 04/2004