Young children experience little emotional burden during invasive procedures in asthma research

Research in children should strike the right balance between protecting underage study subjects and advancing the medical field. This study gives insight into the emotional burden that common invasive research procedures in asthma research have on young children, both from the child and parent perspective. Puppetry was used to stimulate children (age 5–6 years) to explain their emotional burden prior to and after the research procedures. We operationalised emotional burden as willingness to participate in future research and reluctance towards participation. Parents filled out a questionnaire on this topic. Symptomatic patients as well as healthy controls were analysed. Forty-one children were included. Children’s anticipatory fear for future research showed a clear decrease of 0.7 ± 1.6 on a 5-point Likert scale as a consequence of participation (p = 0.02). Sixty percent of all participating children explicitly indicated willingness to undergo identical research procedures again. Children uninformed by their parents about the venipuncture were significantly more reluctant to the venipuncture after the procedure (p < 0.01), compared to children who had been informed (4.0 ± 0.9 resp. 2.8 ± 1.2).

Conclusion: This study suggests that the emotional burden of participation in asthma research for underage children can be prevented when they are properly informed and decreases as a consequence of participations. We believe increased emphasis should be placed on informing children and evaluating the emotional impact of research to help caretakers and research ethics committees make informed decisions about participation of children in medical research.