Passive Digital Marker Can Identify Childhood Asthma Risk

TUESDAY, June 17, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- It is feasible to use electronic health record (EHR) data in the Pediatric Asthma Risk Score (PARS) to accurately predict childhood asthma risk, according to a study published in the June issue of eClinicalMedicine.Arthur Hamie Owora, Ph.D., M.P.H., from the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, and colleagues sought to externally validate and update the PARS as a passive digital marker (PDM) for asthma risk. The analysis included data from 69,109 children born between 2010 and 2017, of whom 5,290 (7.65 percent) had a confirmed asthma diagnosis after age 4 years.The researchers found that the PDM had a higher prognostic accuracy (area under the curve [AUC], 0.79; sensitivity, 0.71; and specificity, 0.74) than the EHR-based PARS (AUC, 0.76; sensitivity, 0.74; and specificity, 0.68) for early case detection. Satisfactory calibration was seen for both the PDM and EHR-based PARS. Among children identified as high-risk at age 3 years, the incidence of asthma was higher with the PDM versus the EHR-based PARS (37 versus 26 percent)."Our hope is that using the childhood asthma passive digital marker in clinical practice will improve the early detection of asthma risk in high-risk children, allowing for earlier interventions that could improve asthma control and lessen the future risk of hospitalization," Owora said in a statement.Abstract/Full Text.Sign up for our weekly HealthDay newsletter