DR BRONWYN Brew (pictured) has been announced as the recipient of the 2023 Asthma and Airways Career Development Fellowship, jointly funded by the National Asthma Council Australia and the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand.
Brew was awarded the Fellowship to develop her research into the prevention of asthma in children through inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) control of maternal asthma in pregnancy.
"With this project I would like to investigate the possibility that regular ICS use in pregnancy in women with asthma will actually help to prevent the development of asthma in their children," Brew said.
"In addition, I want to investigate if women without maternal exacerbations (hospital or emergency, period of breathlessness) are also less likely to have children with asthma."
Brew shared that both these results together would suggest that better asthma control in pregnancy has the potential to not only improve perinatal outcomes and maternal health but may reduce asthma in children.
"Despite studies showing that ICS use by women at the start of pregnancy, mid pregnancy and/or the end of pregnancy was strongly associated with a lower risk of asthma, wheeze and use of SABA in children aged four to six years, there has been a lack of research to confirm these results.
"My research will aim to answer whether asthma control exhibited by regular ICS use and a lack of exacerbations may reduce asthma onset in children," she explained.
Brew plans to conduct an observational replication study using population-wide linked health data of pregnant women with asthma and their offspring in both Australia and Sweden.
She said that the public health significance of this finding is important for respiratory health to improve population asthma rates.
"If we find that regular ICS use in pregnancy and prevention of maternal exacerbations will reduce asthma in children, the plan is to verify this with different study designs and ultimately attempt to explain the mechanistic pathway to child asthma," said Brew.
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