Can childhood asthma be “cured”?

  Many parents of children with asthma see this topic and it is a major concern for them. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that “internal medicine does not treat asthma and surgery does not treat ringworm”, and once a child is diagnosed with asthma, parents are concerned that the disease will be with them for the rest of their lives. In fact, the prognosis of childhood asthma is different from that of adult asthma, and most children with asthma will recover naturally by the time they reach puberty. Foreign studies have shown that the prevalence of asthma in children is more than 5%, but the prevalence of asthma in adults is only 0.5%, and excluding other factors, it can be deduced that eight or nine out of ten children can be cured. Therefore, the prognosis of asthma in children is significantly better than that in adults.  However, it is wrong to think that pediatric asthma will be cured naturally by adolescence and that it is irrelevant whether it is cured or not. Because, without active and effective treatment, the rate of childhood asthma developing into adult asthma is still very high, up to 60%-70%, and the lowest 5%-10% develop into adult asthma. Therefore, this erroneous and one-sided understanding of childhood asthma has caused many children with asthma to lose a favorable opportunity for treatment.  Research has confirmed that asthma is a chronic allergic inflammation of the airways, which persists regardless of the asthma attack, resulting in increased airway reactivity and sensitivity to external stimuli in children with asthma; this is why children with asthma wheeze when they encounter stimuli such as excessive cold, excessive heat, sweet or salty food, odors, smoke, pollen or respiratory infections, while normal children do not. The cause of wheezing does not occur in normal children. If continuous and effective treatment is not adhered to and the inflammation is not completely controlled, asthma will recur and affect the lung development and growth of the child. Therefore, in children who do not receive regular treatment, lung function tests often reveal varying degrees of airway dysfunction even when the asthma is “non-existent”. Therefore, asthma should be treated “as early as possible” to avoid affecting lung development and causing irreversible damage to the lungs and airways. The negative attitude of waiting for “self-cure” is undesirable, especially for children with the following conditions that require active treatment.  First, children with frequent asthma attacks and poor adherence to treatment. It has been suggested that an asthma attack at age 14 is a good indicator of a change in the condition. If wheezing is still frequent at age 14, 68% of children may become adults with asthma. Second, airway hyperresponsiveness may also persist in children with severe allergies or who have had severe asthma attacks, and asthma attacks may also persist. There is also a significant increase in the likelihood that children with untimely asthma diagnosis, late start of treatment, and poor lung function will develop into adult asthma.  Therefore, we believe that most patients with childhood asthma can recover spontaneously with age or can be well controlled with treatment and basically reach clinical cure. For children with frequent asthma attacks and severe symptoms, it is more important to take active and correct therapeutic measures during the pre-puberty period (14 years old for boys and 12 years old for girls), insist on long-term treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs such as inhaled hormones and targeted specific immunotherapy, strengthen physical exercise with medication, enhance their own physical fitness and immunity, keep their lung function normal, and control asthma without attacks for more than 2 years If the asthma attack is terminated in adolescence, it is expected that the asthma attack will be terminated in adolescence. Otherwise, it will develop into adult asthma.