Funding outcome

Asthma is a disease of the lungs that makes it hard to breath. It is a very common illness in children and is often hard to control, which makes asthma dangerous. Children who have problems controlling their breathing are also more likely to have lung disease when they grow up. The reason some children have asthma is because their parents have asthma. It can also be because their lungs react to things in the air that we breath. Some children are more likely to have asthma because of what happened to their mother while she was pregnant and the air she was breathing. This study will look at if what happens during pregnancy also affects how easy or hard it is to control asthma symptoms in children. All children who were born between 2010 and 2012 in Alberta and had asthma before they were five years old will be part of this study. We will use information from health databases. We will test if the mother had health problems, was breathing dirty air when she was pregnant, was old when the baby was born, or if the baby was born very early or very small are important for childhood asthma control. We will also test if where they live and their social status are important. The results from this study can help children with asthma and their families to understand why it is hard to control asthma symptoms in the child. It will also help us understand if there are things we could do to make it better. This this study could also help hospitals save money if it can help people from having lung disease when they grow up.