Mechanisms of asthma and allergic inflammationLow IFN-γ production in the first year of life as a predictor of wheeze during childhood
Section snippets
Subjects
Parents of 1246 infants who were members of a health maintenance organization in Tucson, Arizona, agreed to have their healthy newborns participate in the Tucson Children's Respiratory Study, a longitudinal prospective study of respiratory illness.16 Tucson has a population of about 500,000 (Census 2000) and is located in the desert southwest, and study subjects lived primarily in suburban neighborhoods. Infants were enrolled between May 1980 and October 1984. After February 1983, studies of
Immune study subject characteristics
The infants with immune studies were not significantly different from those without immune studies regarding the distribution of sex, ethnicity, and parental characteristics (Table II). In addition, the prevalence of atopy at age 6 years and wheeze during the previous year at ages 2 through 13 years was similar for both groups. Because the availability of data on current wheeze varied at each age, we assessed any potential bias among the participating children with and without follow-up data.
Discussion
The results of this study strongly suggest that characteristics of the immune system present during the first year of life can anticipate the likelihood of developing episodes of airway obstruction characterized by wheezing. We cannot conclude from these data whether IFN-γ production itself is responsible for our findings or whether IFN-γ production acts as a marker for a more global alteration of the immune system that is present in early life in these children. However, the lack of relation
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Supported by National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute grants HL-14136 and HL-56177.
Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: The authors have declared that they have no conflict of interest.