Asthma is the most frequent chronic inflammatory disease in childhood, and its prevalence has increased remarkably over the last decades. Therefore, the scientific community became interested in studying the growth of the affected children. The relationship between asthma and growth suffers the influence of the clinical picture, of therapeutics, but the different study methods make it difficult to distinguish the factors responsible for the growth retardation detected by some authors. This review has the purpose of providing an overall outlook on this matter. (J Pneumol 2003;29(1):36-42)