ArticleBMJ open2014
Validating childhood asthma in an epidemiological study using linked electronic patient records.
Article in BMJ open, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Early life vitamin D status and asthma and wheeze: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC pulmonary medicine · 2018Pooled it
- Factors influencing the development of primary care data collection projects from electronic health records: a systematic review of the literature.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2017Pooled it
- Maternal and cord blood vitamin D status and childhood infection and allergic disease: a systematic review.Nutrition reviews · 2016Pooled it
- Pet ownership is associated with increased risk of non-atopic asthma and reduced risk of atopy in childhood: findings from a UK birth cohort.Clinical and experimental allergy : journal of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology · 2015Trial
- Joint modelling of wheeze and lung function from childhood to early adulthood: four population-based birth cohorts.EClinicalMedicine · 2026Article
- Comorbidity of asthma and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in childhood: causal, shared early-life risk factors, or shared genetic liability?International journal of epidemiology · 2026Article
- Impact of varying childhood asthma definitions on incidence and clinical outcomes.Annals of allergy, asthma & immunology : official publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology · 2026Article
- Agreement between parent reported and clinical coding of asthma, eczema and allergic rhinitis: The multi-ethnic Born in Bradford cohort.Pediatric allergy and immunology : official publication of the European Society of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology · 2025Article
- Disagreement concerning atopic dermatitis subtypes between an English prospective cohort (ALSPAC) and linked electronic health records.Clinical and experimental dermatology · 2024Article
- Association of psoriasis with allergic multimorbidity of asthma, rhinitis, and eczema among adolescents: a cross-sectional study.Allergy, asthma, and clinical immunology : official journal of the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology · 2024Article
- Dietary patterns, lung function and asthma in childhood: a longitudinal study.Respiratory research · 2023Article
- Dietary intake of vitamin A, lung function and incident asthma in childhood.The European respiratory journal · 2021Article
- Gestational hypertension and childhood atopy: a Millennium Cohort Study analysis.European journal of pediatrics · 2021Article
- Factors associated with participation over time in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children: a study using linked education and primary care data.International journal of epidemiology · 2021Article
- A comparison of childhood asthma case definitions based on parent-reported data.Annals of epidemiology · 2021Article
- Defining asthma in children: how well do parents, doctors and spirometry agree?ERJ open research · 2020Article
- Exposure to Indoor Mouldy Odour Increases the Risk of Asthma in Older Adults Living in Social Housing.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2019Article
- Concordance between survey reported childhood asthma and linked Medicaid administrative records.The Journal of asthma : official journal of the Association for the Care of Asthma · 2019Article
- Maternal dietary antioxidant intake in pregnancy and childhood respiratory and atopic outcomes: birth cohort study.The European respiratory journal · 2018Article
- Agreement in reporting of asthma by parents or offspring - the RHINESSA generation study.BMC pulmonary medicine · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveTo investigate the performance of parent-reported data in identifying physician-confirmed asthma. DESIGN AND
settingValidation study using linkage between the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) and electronic patient records held within the General Practice Research Database (GPRD).
participantsParticipants were those eligible to participate in ALSPAC who also had a record in the GPRD; this included 765 individuals, just under 4% of ALSPAC-eligible participants. The analysis was based on 141 participants with complete parent-reported asthma data. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: The main GPRD outcome measure was whether a child had a diagnosis of asthma before they were nine. Parent-reported measures were doctor diagnosis of asthma (before mean age 7.5 years), various outcomes based on wheezing and breathlessness recorded longitudinally between 6 months and 8.5 years. Secondary outcomes were bronchial hyper-responsiveness (BHR), forced expiratory volume in 1 s/forced vital capacity ratio and skin prick test responses.
resultsAmong the 141 participants with complete parent-reported data, 26 (18%) had an asthma diagnosis before age nine. Using general practitioner (GP)-recorded asthma as the gold standard, the question 'Has a doctor ever diagnosed your child with asthma?' was both sensitive (88.5%) and specific (95.7%). 'Ever wheezed' had the highest sensitivity (100%) but low specificity (60%). More specific definitions were obtained by restricting to those who had wheezed on more than one occasion, experienced frequent wheeze and/or wheezed after the age of 3, but these measures had low sensitivities. BHR only identified 50% of those with a GP-recorded diagnosis.
conclusionsParental reports of a doctor's diagnosis agree well with a GP-recorded diagnosis. High specificity for asthma can be achieved by using detailed wheezing questions, although these definitions are likely to exclude mild cases of asthma. Our study shows that linkage between observational studies and electronic patient records has the potential to enhance epidemiological research.
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