C-reactive protein monitoring in children with acute asthma

Aim: To assess whether the determination of high sensitive C-reactive protein (hsCRP) could bi used as biomarker of successful drug administration in children with asthma exacerbation. Subjects and methods: The study included 28 control children and 27 pediatric asthmatics who were hospitalized for treatment of asthma exacerbation. All patients were treated with continuous inhalations of short acting _2-agonists and inhaled corticosteroids administration. A pair of routine serum samples (one taken before and one three days after drug administration) were taken for hsCRP determination. The concentration of hsCRP was determined by the immunoturbidimetric method on latex particles on an Olympus AU400 biochemistry analyzer. Results: The concentration of hsCRP was statistically significantly higher in children with asthma (before drug administration: 3.00 ± 1.92 mg/L; three days after drug administration: 0.80 ± 0.61 mg/L) than in healthy children (0.36 ± 0.21 mg/L). Conclusion: Study results suggest that hsCRP could have the potential as a nonspecific biomarker for monitoring inflammation in children with asthma exacerbation. Further research is are needed to find the correlation between specific and nonspecific biomarkers of inflammation in asthma.