What makes preschool wheeze persist as childhood asthma? - Development of dynamic ribonucleic acid biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis

9.48M kr SEK

Funder	Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation
Recipient Organization	Karolinska Institutet
Country	Sweden
Start Date	Jan 01, 2021
End Date	Dec 31, 2022
Duration	729 days
Number of Grantees	1
Roles	Principal Investigator
Data Source	Swedish Research Council
Grant ID	`20200138_HLF`

Grant Description

Bakgrund:

Asthma is a complex disease with genetic and environmental contribution. No biomarkers exist that could accurately diagnose or prognose asthma, predict the outcome, monitor the progression or the effect of treatment. Our results suggest that childhood asthma patients and their subtypes can be distinguished by blood transcriptomics. Also, we could identify longitudinal epigenetic patterns in asthmatic children indicating activation of eosinophils and cytotoxic Tcells.

Målsättning:

We aim to characterize the viral, genetic and immunological factors for acute childhood asthma. We will also evaluate the importance of early airway infections and interaction between specific viruses, allergy, and genetic predisposition for the risk of persistent asthma. We hope to develop a molecular tool to complement the clinical diagnosis of asthma.

We aim to discover and adopt novel RNA-based biomarkers to diagnose asthma, monitor disease progression, predict its outcome and study treatment effects. Arbetsplan: 156 children (