In children with mild-to-moderate asthma, the Pediatric Asthma Risk Score (PARS) personalized tool performed better than the Asthma Predictive Index (API) in predicting asthma development, a recent study found. Researchers used data from the Cincinnati Allergy and Air Pollution Study (n=762) birth cohort to identify factors that predicted asthma development. The sensitivity and specifying of PARS were compared with those of the API. They found:

• PARS reliability predicted asthma development in the study cohort (sensitivity = 0.68, specificity = 0.77).

• Although both the PARS and API predicted asthma in high-risk children, the PARS had improved ability to predict asthma in children with mild-to-moderate asthma risk.
• In addition to parental asthma, eczema, and wheezing apart from colds, variables the predicted asthma in the PARS included early wheezing, sensitization to ≥2 food allergens and/or aeroallergens, and African American race.