Pediatric asthma evaluation: what's to be considered?

The increasing evidence that asthma begins very early in childhood leads the need for having outcome's measures able to identify the early damage and its evolution both for research than for clinical purposes. The current available methods are clinical questionnaires, pulmonary function tests, airway reactivity tests and direct or indirect inflammation markers' measures. Among the first, ISAAC questionnaire, for epidemiological purpose, Asthma Control Test, for clinical monitoring and Health Related Quality of Life questionnaire are the most used. There are many pulmonary function tests that may be used in all age for functional evaluation, but airway responsiveness measures may be commonly performed only in school age children.As regards respiratory inflammation measures the only currently useful is the exhaled nitric oxide evaluation. The complexity of the pathogenic mechanisms, molecular, cellular and inflammatory that realize the asthmatic syndrome and the effects of the disease on respiratory function, on the activity of the child, on the quality of life of the family and on the economic costs to society show that there is no a single outcome measure that can evaluate all these effects simultaneously.