Early prediction of pediatric asthma in the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) birth cohort using machine learning

Background

Early identification of children at risk of asthma can have significant clinical implications for effective intervention and treatment. This study aims to disentangle the relative timing and importance of early markers of asthma.

Methods

Using the CHILD Cohort Study, 132 variables measured in 1754 multi-ethnic children were included in the analysis for asthma prediction. Data up to 4 years of age was used in multiple machine learning models to predict physician-diagnosed asthma at age 5 years. Both predictive performance and variable importance was assessed in these models.

Results

Early-life data (≤1 year) has limited predictive ability for physician-diagnosed asthma at age 5 years (area under the precision-recall curve (AUPRC) < 0.35). The earliest reliable prediction of asthma is achieved at age 3 years, (area under the receiver-operator curve (AUROC) > 0.90) and (AUPRC > 0.80). Maternal asthma, antibiotic exposure, and lower respiratory tract infections remained highly predictive throughout childhood. Wheezing status and atopy are the most important predictors of early childhood asthma from among the factors included in this study.

Conclusions

Childhood asthma is predictable from non-biological measurements from the age of 3 years, primarily using parental asthma and patient history of wheezing, atopy, antibiotic exposure, and lower respiratory tract infections.

Impact

Machine learning models can predict physician-diagnosed asthma in early childhood (AUROC > 0.90 and AUPRC > 0.80) using ≥3 years of non-biological and non-genetic information, whereas prediction with the same patient information available before 1 year of age is challenging.

Wheezing, atopy, antibiotic exposure, lower respiratory tract infections, and the child’s mother having asthma were the strongest early markers of 5-year asthma diagnosis, suggesting an opportunity for earlier diagnosis and intervention and focused assessment of patients at risk for asthma, with an evolving risk stratification over time.