NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Levels of nitric oxidein exhaled breath are higher in young children with frequentrecurrent wheeze and these children are at higher risk for asthma,compared with young children who only wheeze occasionally, researchshows.

Because respiratory symptoms are so common in childhood,progression to asthma can be hard to predict, Dr. Alexander Moellerof Children’s Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland, and colleagues note inthe Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

They investigated the utility of using exhaled nitric oxide,which is thought to reflect the degree of inflammation in theairways, to help differentiate between groups at different levelsof asthma risk in 391 children.

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