Denise Daley, PhD: Early Asthma Interventions for Infants

Identifying children with asthma early could allow clinicians to intervene and tackle some of the other comorbidities commonly linked to the condition including allergies and atopic dermatitis.

By catching asthma early parents and doctors can commit to plans that reduces the risk of developing the disease including measures involving cribs, breastfeeding, and pets.

In an abstract originally planned for presentation at the American Thoracic Society (ATS) 2020 International Conference, a team, led by Denise Daley, PhD, University of British Columbia, found the epigenetic clock could help identify the risk of asthma for infants.

The investigators used the Horvath age prediction algorithm to examine the predicted biological age of participants with and without asthma in a pair of cohorts based in Canada and discovered asthmatic children are older on the epigenetic clock at birth and at age 7 than children without asthma.

This discovery is actually reversed for adults, which is also true for autoimmune diseases.

Daley explained in an interview with HCPLive®, how the epigenetic clock could help reduce asthma incidence rates and what the plans are for future studies about exploring the specific epigenetic sites.