They have inherited a double copy of a gene that impairs the effect of the blue Ventolin inhaler, the most common inhaler on the market, it said.
The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Immunology, said 13 per cent of children with asthma in Britain carried genetic variant Arg16, which increases the risk of asthma attacks for those who use inhalers on a daily basis by more than 30 per cent.
Co-author Professor Somnath Mukhopadhyay, of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, said: "Do not stop using your inhaler or change the way you use the inhaler.
"[The drug] Salbutamol via the blue inhaler is effective reliever treatment in most children but it is a common experience among doctors that a proportion of children do not seem to respond to this medicine as well as others."
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