The relationship of the etiologic factors in asthma in infants and children

Chlamydia pneumoniae-Specific IgE Is Prevalent in Asthma and Is Associated with Disease Severity

“…These two findings (disease association and “dose response") are two epidemiological criteria that support (but cannot in themselves prove) a causal association. Early observations led clinicians to speculate that infections, via bacterial allergy, played an important role in asthma pathogenesis [1]. Subsequent epidemiological evidence indicated that asthma was almost always associated with elevated IgE levels that were not necessarily induced by common aeroallergens [29].…”

“…“Bacterial allergy" was once thought to be a mechanism linking respiratory bacterial infections and asthma symptoms [1]. Currently, viral infections are widely acknowledged as precipitants of asthma exacerbations, and may be involved in the natural history of asthma, as reviewed elsewhere [2].…”

Asthma in Childhood

“…When an infected antrum is drained or a septal operation performed the asthma has often been relieved. Chobot, Uvitsky, and Dundy (1951) attach great importance to respiratory infection in children as a cause of asthma. The figures I have quoted support this opinion, but I find it difficult to decide from any available evidence, my own or that of others, whether 'allergy to infecting bacteria or the obstruction produced by inflammatory oedema is prepotent in this connexion.…”

Bacteria and asthma: more there than we thought

“…The possibility that bacterial infections are responsible for asthma symptoms has been entertained for over 100 years [2]. In the first half of the 20 th century, a widely held concept was that asthma exacerbations were related to ‘bacterial allergy’ in which a hypersensitivity reaction to bacteria was responsible for worsening asthma symptoms and could be improved with allergy shots to bacteria [3]. This was debunked in 1959 by the first randomized controlled trial of bacterial immunotherapy for the treatment of asthma [4].…”