ABSTRACT
Asthma is one of the most common chronic childhood illnesses. Wheezing and childhood asthma comprises a heterogeneous group of conditions having different outcomes over the course of childhood. Most of the infants who wheeze have a transient condition associated with diminished airway function at birth and they do not develop asthma later in life. An increasing prevalence and severity of asthma have been reported worldwide. Asthma rates in children below the age of 5 years have increased more than 160% during past two decades. The clinical course of asthma in children is extremely variable. Some children have early onset beginning in infancy and regress completely. Others develop at a later age and continue to be symptomatic throughout their life and progress to irreversible air flow obstruction. Knowledge of the natural history of asthma is important for understanding and predicting the clinical course of different asthmatic phenotypes. This chapter attempts to discuss the evolution of childhood asthma when these children transform into adolescents and young adults.
