Background
asthma-like symptoms, wheezing, asthma, exhaled breath, wheeze
ASTHMATIC, ASTHMA
The prevalence of asthma-like symptoms in preschool children is high. Despite numerous efforts, there still is no clinically available diagnostic tool to discriminate asthmatic children from children with transient wheeze at preschool age. This leads to potential overtreatment of children outgrowing their symptoms, and to potential undertreatment of children who turn out to have asthma. Our research group developed a breath test (using GC-tof–MS for VOC-analysis in exhaled breath) that is able to predict a diagnosis of asthma at preschool age. The ADEM2 study assesses the improvement in health gain and costs of care with the application of this breath test in wheezing preschool children.