Grant: Project Grant

Asthma is the most commonly experienced chronic illness in children. Recently, our group published work that supports the notion that a decline in the use of antibiotics in babies may account for some of the observed decline in asthma rates in children and that this occurs because children who get antibiotics may be missing bacteria in the gut that help tune a baby's immune responses away from allergy. We aim to see if this effect is demonstrable in children born in BC and Manitoba at the patient-level over 10 years of recruitment, following the children up to age 7. We have determined that comparable data to assess this relationship already exist in data sets held within both jurisdictions. Hence this proposal is for funds to allow the access, linkage and analysis of such data in both provinces. We want to test the idea that children who are not exposed to antibiotics in infancy are at lower risk for asthma and other allergic diseases later in childhood. In doing so we must also take into account other important factors linked to asthma, such as air pollution exposure and have identified sources of information that will allow us to do so. If we show that the risk of asthma falls when unnecessary antibiotic use is avoided, this would point the way to a new tool for those working to prevent this troubling illness. When combined with existing knowledge about smoke avoidance, the importance of breastfeeding and other factors, we believe that acting on this knowledge could help to substantially reduce the burden of illness from allergic asthma and related conditions for future generations.