SALT LAKE CITY — A team of University of Utah researchers hopes to eliminate some of the guess work over what triggers a child's asthma attack, including local air quality conditions that could play a role.
A $5.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s biomedical and bioengineering arm will fund a four-year effort to build a database deriving information from 10 to 20 Utah families. Information will be culled from the use of personal air quality sensors and submissions of web-based information designed to create a blueprint for future research.
The crowd-sourced data will be derived from a virtual pipeline in which a child's air quality sensor in a backpack could pick up irritants like aerosol spray and if that was the likely cause of a child's subsequent trip to the emergency room.
"Whatever happens indoors is going to contribute quite a bit to your exposure,” says Neal Patwari, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering who is designing wireless sensor networks for the project. “The devices will monitor what’s going on right around you and send the data to information systems so researchers can eventually analyze it. They also may give you immediate feedback so you can take action to limit your exposure.”
Eventually, the database will incorporate information from doctors’ records, hospital emergency room visits, wearable Fitbit-like sensors, and regional air quality monitors like those installed on UTA TRAX trains.
"It is that whole pipeline that will allow that clinical research to happen," said Kathy Sward, associate professor of biomedical informatics research at the U.'s College of Nursing and the co-principal investigator on the study. "We know that there are a lot of things that affect asthma and a lot of complex interactions between influences in the environment, people's genetics, their behavior and their lifestyle. These things really play together in a complex way."
Sward said current research is limited to just a smattering of "inputs" that provide insights into asthma triggers, while this effort will build on gathering a more complete array of influences and ultimately assess them to get a more comprehensive picture.
The problem with trying to pinpoint what caused a child's wheezing is that doctors often have to rely on imprecise or non-localized data derived from regional air quality monitors, researchers added.
“Because we experience these periodic levels of pollution during our wintertime inversion and during our summertime ozone season, but we have very good air the rest of the year, this may give us the ability to tease out the impact of some of these triggers,” says Kerry Kelly, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and associate director of the U.’s Air Quality, Health and Society Program.
The Utah team will work in tandem with another group of researchers creating similar systems in another state. The national institute wants to use the new networks as the basis for a national data coordinating center for pediatric asthma which could eventually be made available online to the public.
This project will help families to know when and how their asthma is affected.
“We want doctors to be able to say to patients: ‘Based on your data, when you are exposed at this level to this pollutant, this is how you will react,’” says Flory Nkoy, an associate research professor of pediatrics and investigator on the project.
The University of Utah is one of nine research universities awarded funding in the $20 million-plus research effort.
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