Curie Brief
Turn on cookies to sign in
Signing in saves your progress to your Curie account. We can only do that with cookies on — turn them on to continue.
News
Diagnosing asthma in allergic kids just got a potential upgrade. A new study found that children with asthma have significantly higher blood levels of a protein called eosinophil-derived neurotoxin (EDN) compared to kids with other allergies or healthy children. When added to machine learning diagnostic models, EDN improved classification accuracy — offering a promising new tool for earlier, more precise asthma diagnosis.
Diagnosing asthma in children who already have allergies can be tricky — the symptoms often overlap. But a new study published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: Global suggests a blood protein called eosinophil-derived neurotoxin (EDN) could help cut through the confusion.
Researchers at Mayo Clinic studied 141 children — 74 with asthma, 35 with other allergic conditions, and 32 healthy kids. They found that EDN levels were highest in kids with asthma, intermediate in those with other allergies, and lowest in healthy children. Notably, EDN also tracked with asthma severity: kids with a more inflammatory ("T2-high") asthma subtype had significantly higher EDN levels than those with milder disease. When EDN was plugged into machine learning diagnostic models, it boosted classification accuracy — suggesting it could serve as a useful biomarker alongside existing tools.
By the Numbers:
Why it matters: Asthma is one of the most common chronic conditions in children, and misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis can lead to poor disease control. A reliable blood marker like EDN could give clinicians a sharper, less invasive tool to distinguish asthma from overlapping allergic conditions — especially in younger patients who can't always complete breathing tests.
