WELLINGTON -- A New Zealand specialist has advocated routine skin prick testing of asthmatics by doctors to help their patients identify allergies which contribute to their illness, DPA reported.

Many asthmatics had only part knowledge, and some no awareness, of specific allergic triggers and skin-prick testing was the simplest method of determining them, Dr. Isobel Martin said in a study in the New Zealand Medical Journal.

A senior lecturer at Dunedin Medical School, Dr.

Martin said nine percent of New Zealand adults took regular medication to control asthma symptoms but skin-prick testing was rarely offered by doctors in general practice.

A small number of studies had already shown a clinical benefit from reducing allergens, she said.

The president of Asthma New Zealand, Dr. Allen Liang, told the New Zealand Herald that doctors should be paying more attention to allergies because they played a big role in the onset of asthma in children.

But he said allergen testing was not straightforward as both skin pricks and blood tests were needed to establish the allergen and the severity of its effect.