How children's immune systems fight respiratory viruses when they have asthma, allergies, or obesity
Official title: HIPC U19 Project 1
Funded at Benaroya Research Inst at Virginia Mason · NIH-11332438 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This project is looking at how the immune systems of children with asthma, allergies, or obesity respond over time to respiratory viral infections compared with children without those conditions.
Quick facts
| Grant type | NIH-funded research |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Benaroya Research Inst at Virginia Mason NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Seattle, United States) |
| Project start | March 29, 2022 |
| Project end | February 28, 2027 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $326,265 |
| NIH project number | 5U19AI167891-05 |
| Project ID | NIH-11332438 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal participants are children (typically ages 0–11) who have asthma, allergic (atopic) conditions, or obesity, as well as control children without these conditions for comparison.
✕Less likely to help
Adults and people unwilling or unable to attend in-person sample collection visits or provide multiple nasal and blood samples are unlikely to benefit directly from this project.
What this research studies
If your child joins, the team will follow them through acute respiratory viral infections and collect airway and blood samples at set times to see how immune responses change over time. The researchers will measure many types of data from those samples, including gene activity, proteins, DNA methylation, immune cell types, and viral amount. They will compare children with asthma, atopy (allergic diseases), or obesity to control children without those conditions and link immune patterns to how long and how severe infections are. The work uses shared lab cores and high-dimensional immune profiling to get a broad picture of both airway and systemic immune reactions.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could help tailor prevention or treatment approaches to reduce infection severity in children with asthma, allergies, or obesity.
How similar studies have gone: Previous studies have shown that children with asthma or allergies can have different immune responses to respiratory viruses, but this comprehensive, multi-omics, longitudinal approach is relatively new.
Where this research is happening
-
Benaroya Research Inst at Virginia Mason
Seattle, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Altman, Matthew C. — Benaroya Research Inst at Virginia Mason
- Study coordinator: Altman, Matthew C.
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.