ResearchAlmost a third of Irish children are exhibiting symptoms of asthma, an EU health conference held in University College, Cork, at the weekend, heard.
Representatives from 13 European countries from a range of disciplines such as environmental health, genetics and respiratory specialists gathered in UCC to develop new proposals for tackling childhood asthma under the direction of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) headed by Cork man Dr Barry McSweeney.
The JRC is pioneering a new approach - human envirogenomics - combining examination of genetic predisposition with environmental factors to better understand the complex causes and triggers of diseases in an effort to significantly improve prevention of various disease.
The JRC has focused on childhood asthma and is promoting the creation of a major European research initiative on this topic: the Childhood Asthma Envirogenomics (CASE) project.
Its main objective is to find correlations between asthma symptoms, genetic information and environmental exposures to known asthma-triggers and promoters in different parts of Europe in large population studies.
To achieve this, appropriate "biomarkers" of exposure have to be identified and the resulting laboratory and field data analysed using state-of-the-art bioinformatics, delegates were told.
The JRC has commissioned two studies identifying the scope and funding of research on asthma-related topics as well as the prevalence and cost of childhood asthma in Europe. Dr McSweeney said, 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 posed 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," he said.
Across Europe, there is total of 9.3 million children with wheeze and 5.5 million children with self-reported asthma. "The total costs of asthma for the 25 countries of the EU are estimated at €3 billion," Dr McSweeney added.
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin said that "despite much research and the development of modern therapies, the incidence of childhood asthma in Europe remains unaccountably high". He welcomed the EU initiative to look beyond conventional approaches and to examine other factors like lifestyle and genetic predisposition to find a better mix of prevention and treatment in dealing with this condition affecting so many young Irish children.
Much emphasis at the conference was placed on the possible identification of children with a genetic predisposition which makes them more likely to develop asthma when exposed to certain risk factors.