In the paper entitled “Asthma exacerbations in children immediately following stressful life events: a Cox’s hierarchical regression” by S Sandberg et al which appeared in the December issue of Thorax (2004; 59:1046–51), some of the statistics have been incorrectly presented.

In the Results section of the abstract on page 1046, the first sentence should read: “An immediate effect evident within the first 2 days following a severely negative life event increased the risk of a new asthma attack by a factor of 4.69, 95% confidence interval 2.33 to 9.44 (p<0.001)”. The third sentence should read: “In addition to the immediate effect, an increased risk of 1.81 (95% confidence interval 1.24 to 2.65) was found 5–7 weeks after a severe event (p = 0.002)”.

On page 1049 the third paragraph should read: “The effect of a severely negative life event was as follows. The immediate effect corresponding to 1–2 days after the event increased the risk of a new asthma exacerbation by a factor of 4.69 (95% confidence interval 2.33 to 9.44) which was statistically significant (p<0.001), whereas the effect for days 3–10 after the event was not statistically significant (p = 0.5). The risk of an asthma attack varied considerably between children; the frailty term was highly significant (p<0.001).”