Our proposal builds upon our established, successful school-based infrastructure to determine whether a school/classroom intervention will efficiently and effectively improve asthma morbidity by reducing these exposures. Our goal is to determine the efficacy of school/classroom based environmental intervention in reducing asthma morbidity in urban schoolchildren. Our central hypothesis is that reducing classroom/school exposure to mouse allergen, mold, and particulate pollutants will decrease asthma morbidity in students with asthma. The investigators plan to test this hypothesis in an intervention study of 300 elementary students with asthma from multiple classrooms in inner-city elementary schools. Our clinical trial aims are to determine the effectiveness of a school/classroom based environmental intervention (school integrated pest management and classroom air purifying filter units within these schools) to reduce asthma morbidity. Our mechanistic aim is to test the hypothesis that effects of school/classroom-based environmental interventions on symptoms/other measures of asthma control occur through changes in gene methylation or expression in pathways (and secondarily, in genes) relevant to airway function and asthma. This will expand our understanding of asthma immunopathogenesis and create opportunities to identify potential novel targets for asthma therapy.
