Association between house dust mites sensitization and level of asthma control and severity in children attending Mansoura University Children’s Hospital

Abstract Background House dust mites (HDM) are considered as a major source of indoor aeroallergen all over the world that precipitate allergic reactions including rhinoconjunctivitis, food allergy, atopic dermatitis, and allergic asthma. In this study, we aimed to assess the clinical and laboratory profile of some Egyptian asthmatic children who are sensitized to house dust mites and determine the association of HDM sensitization and severity of asthma according to recent GINA guidelines. Results The most frequent clinical phenotype among the HDM-positive group was a cough (96.7%), while the clinical phenotypic wheeze was frequent in HDM negative group (96.7%). There is a statistically significant difference between studied cases classified according to sensitivity to HDM regarding level of asthma control (50.0% were uncontrolled among cases sensitive to HDM and 56.7% of cases non-sensitive to HDM were controlled (p = 0.001*). Severity according to treatment results was significantly higher among cases sensitive to HDM (26.7% of cases sensitive to HDM versus 3.3% of cases non-sensitive to HDM), p = 0.017. Conclusions HDM sensitization is associated mainly with cough asthma phenotype and allergic rhinitis in our studied cases. HDM sensitization increases asthma severity and decreases the ability to control asthma symptoms. Trial registration ClinicalTrial.gov, NCT04958616