Viral infections, cytokine dysregulation and the origins of childhood asthma and allergic diseases.

Background: The origins of asthma and allergic disease begin in early life for many individuals. It is vital to understand the factors and/or events leading to their development.

Methods: The Childhood Origins of Asthma project evaluated children at high risk for asthma to study the relationships among viral infections, environmental factors, immune dysregulation, genetic factors, and the development of atopic diseases.

Rhinovirus illnesses during infancy predict subsequent childhood wheezing.

Background: The contribution of viral respiratory infections during infancy to the development of subsequent wheezing and/or allergic diseases in early childhood is not established.

Objective: To evaluate these relationships prospectively from birth to 3 years of age in 285 children genetically at high risk for developing allergic respiratory diseases.

Methods: By using nasal lavage, the relationship of timing, severity, and etiology of viral respiratory infections during infancy to wheezing in the 3rd year of life was evaluated.

Developmental cytokine response profiles and the clinical and immunologic expression of atopy during the first year of life.

Background: Allergic diseases have been linked to abnormal patterns of immune development, and this has stimulated efforts to define the precise patterns of cytokine dysregulation that are associated with specific atopic phenotypes.

Objective: Cytokine-response profiles were prospectively analyzed over the first year of life and compared with the clinical and immunologic expressions of atopy.

Methods: Umbilical cord and 1-year PBMCs were obtained from 285 subjects from allergic families.

Relationships among specific viral pathogens, virus-induced interleukin-8, and respiratory symptoms in infancy.

Both virus-mediated damage to airway tissues and induction of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-8 (IL-8) could contribute to symptom severity during viral respiratory infections in children. To test the hypothesis that IL-8 contributes to the pathogenesis of respiratory symptoms during naturally acquired respiratory viral infections in children, nasal wash samples collected from infants with acute viral infections (n = 198) or from healthy uninfected infants (n = 31) were analysed for IL-8. Nasal wash IL-8 was positively related to age in uninfected children (rs = 0.