Respiratory viral infections in children with asthma: do they matter and can we prevent them?

BMC Pediatrics

Debate

Carmen M Jones¹  Peter D Sly¹  Yueh-sheng Chen¹  Hamid Ahanchian² 

[1] The Queensland Children’s Medical Research Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia;The Queensland Children’s Medical Research Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia;Allergy research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran;

关键词: Acute respiratory infections;    Childhood asthma;    Common cold;    Acute exacerbations;    Rhinovirus;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2431-12-147

 received in 2012-04-24, accepted in 2012-09-03,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundAsthma is a major public health problem with a huge social and economic burden affecting 300 million people worldwide. Viral respiratory infections are the major cause of acute asthma exacerbations and may contribute to asthma inception in high risk young children with susceptible genetic background. Acute exacerbations are associated with decreased lung growth or accelerated loss of lung function and, as such, add substantially to both the cost and morbidity associated with asthma.DiscussionWhile the importance of preventing viral infection is well established, preventive strategies have not been well explored. Good personal hygiene, hand-washing and avoidance of cigarette smoke are likely to reduce respiratory viral infections. Eating a healthy balanced diet, active probiotic supplements and bacterial-derived products, such as OM-85, may reduce recurrent infections in susceptible children. There are no practical anti-viral therapies currently available that are suitable for widespread use.SummaryHand hygiene is the best measure to prevent the common cold. A healthy balanced diet, active probiotic supplements and immunostimulant OM-85 may reduce recurrent infections in asthmatic children.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Ahanchian et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.