WHAT:
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded $10 million in first-year funding to establish a clinical research network called Childhood Asthma in Urban Settings (CAUSE). This nationwide network will conduct observational studies and clinical trials to improve understanding of asthma and develop treatment and prevention approaches tailored to children of low-income families living in urban communities. NIAID intends to provide approximately $70 million over seven years to support the CAUSE network.
This new initiative extends and expands NIAID's long-standing efforts to better understand and reduce the disproportionate burden of asthma among children living in low-income urban environments. Since 1991, NIAID has sponsored a series of research programs conducted in urban areas where pediatric asthma is prevalent and severe. Among many accomplishments, NIAID-funded research found that exposure to cockroach allergen is a major risk factor for severe asthma in urban children and that programs to decrease exposures to cockroaches and other household allergens reduce children's asthma symptoms and health care visits. Researchers also established that omalizumab, a drug that reduces immunoglobulin E, can prevent seasonal asthma attacks. In addition, scientists identified molecular pathways that evolve in the nasal passages of children with asthma who had colds that led to asthma attacks.