Women in Mathematical Sciences - talk by Dr. Raquel Granell (Univeristy of Bristol)

Three-quarters of children hospitalized for wheezing or asthma symptoms are preschool-aged. Some will continue to experience breathing difficulties through childhood and adulthood. Others will undergo a complete resolution of their symptoms by the time they reach elementary school. The varied trajectories of young children with asthma symptoms suggest that it is a complex disease with different genetic and environmental causes. Despite these differences, wheezing treatments for young children are ‘one size fits all.’ Using statistical methods to underpin the genetic and environmental components of this disease may lead to more customized and effective treatment options.

In this presentation I will briefly introduce the definition of asthma and how it has evolved, its prevalence and trends in the last century, I’ll introduce the concept of asthma as an umbrella term and the importance of the environment, genetics and the interactions of the two; Finally, I will demonstrate the use of latent class analysis to identify subtypes of wheeze or asthma (wheeze phenotypes) using reports of wheezing from birth to adolescence from The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parent and Children (ALSPAC) participants and then characterise their environmental and genetic differences.