This book provides practical guidelines for pediatric wheezing management and helps readers to navigate through the available information with a global, interdisciplinary approach, tracking the wheezing phenomenon, from genetics to environment, and from infections to allergy. The comprehensive coverage of current knowledge on asthma and wheezing-related conditions in children, aims to shift to a new paradigm: asthma primary prevention. Wheezing during the first years of life is globally a very common condition, mainly related with virus infections of the airways: the difficulty in determining who is more likely to be affected, and whether the immune system will overcome it, has led to enduring efforts and investigations, including environmental, and genetic. Lately even artificial intelligence has been applied to gain full understanding. Specific chapters are devoted to embryonic development and maturation of the lung; lung function in infancy, its determinants and tracking to adulthood; preterm birth and its impact on lung; viral airway infections and their effect on the lung and on the inception of allergy; immunological development of the lung; genetic susceptibility and environmental risk or protective factors affecting wheezing; management and potential for prevention at the three levels. Written by renowned experts from over the world, this book will be valued by paediatricians, allergologists, pulmonologists, general and family practitioners, in their day-to-day clinical work.

Luis Garcia-Marcos is Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Murcia. He is head of research at the Allergy Unit, “Arrixaca” Children’s University Hospital in Murcia (Spain). He served as vice-director of the Bio-Health Research Institute of Murcia (IMIB-Arrixaca) and as vice-president of Health Sciences of the University of Murcia. Prof. Marcos gained a PhD issued by the University of Murcia, and was Research scholar at the Arizona Respiratory Center and the BIO5 Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, US. After earning his degree in Medicine at the University of Valencia (Spain), he trained as a pediatrician in his current hospital, and in the London Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond Street, UK. He was then nominated Associated Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Santiago, Chile. He is member of the steering committee of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) and of the Global Asthma Network (GAN). Prof. Garcia-Marcos is principal investigator of the “Nutrition in Early Life and Asthma” birth cohort.  His main research interests are epidemiology of allergic diseases, including asthma, and lung function in infants.
Manuel Sanchez-Solis is Head of the Pediatric Department, Virgen de la Arrixaca University Hospital, Murcia, Spain, and full Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Murcia . He graduated in Medicine at the University of Murcia, Spain, obtaining the PhD degree soon afterwards. He trained as a Pediatrician at his current hospital. He is former President of the Spanish Society of Pediatric Pulmonology and of the Spanish Society of Cystic Fibrosis.  His main research interest is lung function in infants.
Jose A. Castro-Rodriguez is a full Professor of Pediatrics at the Department of Pediatric Pulmonology, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in Santiago, and Chief of Research Commission at the Division of Pediatrics. He graduated in Medicine  at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru, where he completed his Pediatrics residency and gained a PhD degree. We was then trained as Fellow (summa cum laude) in the Department of Pediatric Pulmononology, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile. Prof. Castro-Rodriguez then took a position as a Research Fellow at the University of Arizona in Tucson, US, working on the Children’s Respiratory Study cohort. He has been awarded prizes such as the “Master of Latin American Pediatric Pulmonology” by the Latin American Pediatric Pulmonology Society,  the “Worldwide Scientific Prize” by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases, and was designated an “ATS Fellow”. Prof. Castro-Rodriguez leads a research group at the Department of  Pediatrics Pulmonology, and his main areas of interest are recurrent wheeze, asthma phenotypes and epigenetics, the impact of respiratory viruses on respiratory health, acute bronchiolitis, and therapy for acute and chronic asthma management.