Researchers at Aberdeen University are to investigate if a breathing test could help prevent asthma attacks in children.
Asthmatics produce more nitric oxide than other people and the breath test will monitor levels produced by participants to help guide their treatment and hopefully prevent attacks.
Doctors have previously measured asthma sufferers’ nitric oxide levels to see if they needed more or less medication, but didn’t find the measurement useful.
Now Dr Steven Turner, who is leading the new research, has suggested there was a lack of understanding around what
constitutes a significant change in the quantity produced.
Following a review of 150 cases, Dr Turner and his colleagues have now found that the range of levels in asthmatics is much wider than previously thought and have used this data to make new recommendations.
Dr Turner said: “We’ve always known that nitric oxide levels were important but we didn’t know just how wide the range of nitric oxide levels could be.
“We’ve analysed the data from previous studies and we think we’ve come up with a robust definition of what constitutes a significant change in nitric oxide level for an individual patient.
“This study will use our new definition of nitric oxide level changes, along with close monitoring of the amount of treatment each patient is using in order to accurately show if their asthma requires more or less medication.”
A total of 500 children with asthma from 25 centres around the UK will take part in the research and half will have their treatment guided by the new test, plus any asthma symptoms they have, including monitoring of their use of medication.
The other half will only have their treatment guided by their symptoms and at the end of the study researchers will compare the two groups and how many asthma attacks they have had to judge how effective the test has been.