Wheeze Study

Study Summary 

The diagnosis and management of wheeze in children can be challenging for health care providers. Children present to the Emergency Department (ED) with wheeze associated with many diseases, including asthma, bronchiolitis, and pneumonia. It is essential to identify the correct diagnosis underlying the symptom of wheeze in children as management of these diseases varies greatly. The Wheeze Study aims to determine whether nasopharyngeal aspirate specimens from children presenting with wheeze can help establish an objective way to differentiate asthma, bronchiolitis, and pneumonia in children presenting to the ED with wheeze.

While much is known about inflammation associated with specific respiratory illnesses in children, a holistic integrated approach to the cellular and molecular inflammatory landscape in children across the spectrum of acute wheeze is lacking. The Wheeze study goal is to address this gap in knowledge by an innovate integration of traditional microscopy, microbiome analysis, next-generation time of flight cytometry and multiplex proteomic analyses.

Objectives

1. To quantify and describe inflammatory cells and their subtypes present in NPA specimens from children with acute wheeze
2. To measure the inflammatory mediators and analyze microbiome present in the NPA specimens
3. To map the relationship between the composition of the inflammatory milieu in acutely wheezing children to their subsequent health services utilization. To collect biological/clinical evidence to support a robust, nation-wide longitudinal cohort study evaluating the differences in inflammatory cells/mediators and the outcomes of children with asthma, bronchiolitis and viral wheeze.

Principal Study Investigator: Dr. Graham Thompson

Research Coordinator: Dr. Beata Mickiewicz

Research Student: Sydney Guderyan

Study Team: Dr. Byron Berenger, Dr. Craig Jenne, Dr. Margaret M. Kelly, Dr. Christina Thornton, Dr. Braedon McDonald