1 Department of Child Health, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England
2 Department of Virology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England
We appreciate Dr. Horowitz's helpful criticisms of our paper and we agree that the differential diagnosis of wheezing in the young child can be difficult. That a disease corresponding to our descriptive definition exists, is increasingly called acute bronchiolitis, predominantly affects children under 2, and in at least two out of three children is related to virus (mainly respiratory syncytial virus) infection, is in our view, beyond question.
The difficulty lies in the interpretation of the word asthma.