Hopes old medicine makes breathing easier

AUSTRALIAN researchers are set to trial a decades-old medicine in babies at high risk of asthma, hoping to prevent the respiratory condition.

Xavier Carpe (3) who is asthmatic

AUSTRALIAN researchers are about to trial a decades-old medicine in babies at high risk of asthma, hoping to prevent the debilitating respiratory condition.

Pediatric respiratory physician Peter Sly said the medicine, called OM-85, had been shown to decrease the number of older children getting viral infections and was used as an asthma treatment in Europe.

But it is not available in Australia and has never been tested to see whether it can prevent asthma, except in animal trials.

Professor Sly said studies had found children with a genetic susceptibility to asthma were placed at a much higher risk of developing it if they had allergies, or suffered two or more severe respiratory infections in the first two years of life, particularly if they were associated with a wheeze and a fever.

About 60 babies under nine months of age are required to take part in the study.

Kylie Carpe said she would have participated in the study when her children were babies, given her family history of asthma.

"My dad is a sufferer of asthma, I'm a sufferer and two out of my three children have asthma," she said.

Her youngest child, Xavier, almost 3, has about five to 10 asthma flareups a year.

For more information on the study, phone [phone] .