• Helping clinicians keep pace with rapid advances in pediatric asthma care, this guide
• contains up-to-date discussions of the origins of asthma, the utilization of pharmacogenetics and biomarkers in childhood asthma, and variable response to medications
• covers the features that differentiate childhood asthma from adult onset asthma
• considers factors that may alter the course of asthma including viral infection, the environment, and the effect of early pharmacologic intervention
• details the utilization of computed tomography and chest radiography in patient care
• addresses special problems related to the evaluation of medications in children and provides information on current developments in bronchodilators, mediator antagonists, cytokine inhibitors, corticosteroids, immunomodulators, anti-allergic medications, and preventative and gene therapies

This reference collects the latest studies on the development, diagnosis, and treatment of childhood asthma and offers current perspectives on new technologies that will shape the management of pediatric asthma in the forthcoming decade-illustrating how advances in pulmonary function measurement, inflammatory markers, imaging, and pharmacogenetics will enhance the diagnosis and monitoring of asthma in years to come.