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Most kids with asthma lead normal lives. If necessary, they use daily medication like an inhaled corticosteroid to maintain expandable airways. And, when needed, a bronchodilator helps open up their air passages when the medication can’t do the job.

For about 10% of all people with the condition, however, asthma is their life, said University of Pittsburgh researcher Kathryn Blake. If their asthma is not well treated, “the function of their lungs will change,” and they have the highest risk of dying from the disease.

“We are talking about kids who change their activities, they are waking up one or two nights a week” because of breathing problems, said Reynold Panettieri Jr., vice chancellor of the Rutgers Institute for Translational Medicine. “They didn’t sign up for baseball, soccer, can’t play a wind instrument.”

They do end up in the emergency room for treatment, missing school for days, even weeks, because they can’t control their asthma flare-ups. And where kids go, parents go, missing work, needing babysitters, juggling all sorts of things.

Even though researchers have learned that the condition can develop in several ways, most children with suspected asthma are still treated as if only allergies are involved. Yet they could have inherited their asthma; or be sensitive to some food; or have eczema, also known as atopic dermatitis.

Specialists such as Alfred F. Tallia, chair of family medicine and community health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, wants clinical practice to catch up with current science.

“Now we have to ascertain what is going on, whether it’s more allergic, if there is an immunologic component, or a combination,” Tallia said. Experts also know that there are different levels of asthma severity, he noted.

So the challenge is getting this new information where most young asthma patients are treated — in a family physician’s or pediatrician’s office.

Read the full WHYY article here.