The School-age Asthma Prognosis Score (SAPS): development and external validation in two European cohorts

Researchers developed and validated a simple clinical tool called SAPS to predict asthma remission in school-age children. The study included 1,860 children aged 5-16 years with physician-diagnosed asthma from the Swiss Paediatric Airway Cohort (SPAC). The tool is based solely on clinical history and includes eight predictors: sex, wheeze frequency, night-time awakening, exercise-induced wheeze, pollen-triggered wheeze, animal-triggered wheeze, and maternal and paternal asthma. Asthma remission was defined as the absence of wheeze and inhaler use during 12 months after 2-3 years from diagnosis. The model achieved moderate discriminative ability with an AUC value of 0.71 in the development group and maintained the same ability of 0.71 in external validation using the German ALLIANCE cohort. This practical tool enables clinicians to identify children with lower chances of remission and allows for their closer monitoring.