health and safety: Overweight children at higher risk of asthma

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Overweight children at higher risk of asthma

Shortness Of Breath, Wheezing More Common In Plump Eight-Year-Olds, Say Researchers

New York: Children who are overweight at age 6 to 7 years are at increased risk for having symptoms of asthma like shortness of breath and "twitchy" airways when they are 8 years old, results of a study conducted in the Netherlands show.
    However, children who are overweight at a younger age but reach a normal weight by age 6 to 7 do not appear to have an increased risk for asthma symptoms, according to the study. "These findings suggest that being overweight may affect a child's development of asthma symptoms," Dr Salome Scholtens from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven told Reuters Health.
    "However, if a previously overweight child develops a normal weight, then the asthma symptoms are less likely to persist. We propose that development of a normal weight might positively affect asthma symptoms in overweight children," Scholtens added.
    Each year until the age of 8, Scholtens and colleagues had the parents of 3756 children report their children's weight and any episodes of wheezing or other breathing difficulties as well as the use of inhaled steroids. The researchers tested the children to see how sensitive their airways were to the various allergens they inhaled.
    When the children were 8 years old, 275 (7.3%) wheezed, 361 (9.6%) had difficulty breathing and 268 (7.1%) had a prescription for an inhaled steroid in the preceding year.
    According to the investigators, children who were persistently heavy from a very young age and between age 6 to 7 years were 68% more likely to have breathing difficulties and 66% more likely to have twitchy airways at age 8 than children who were leaner in childhood.
    As mentioned, children who were heavier at a very young age, but who developed a normal weight at age 6 to 7 did not have an increased risk of breathing difficulties. These findings suggest that being overweight in early childhood does not have a lasting effect on breathing difficulties if the child develops a normal weight by 8 years old. The writers of a commentary published with the study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology call the findings "encouraging."
    According to the results of a five-year study by researchers at New York University's School of Medicine, the unusually high numbers of elementary school children suffering from asthma and other respiratory ailments in the South Bronx area of New York, can be attributed to motor vehicle exhaust fumes.
    The researchers say soot particles from the exhaust of diesel trucks is to blame for the alarming rise in asthma in children attending school which are close to busy truck traffic routes.
    It seems that on days when the traffic is particularly heavy the children's asthma symptoms, in particular wheezing, doubled because of the high concentrations of air pollution.
    For the study period the children carried air pollution monitors in their backpacks as they went to and from school everyday, and it was found that all of the children were exposed to tiny particles of dust that was smaller than 2.5 microns ranging from 20 to 50 micrograms per cubic meter. REUTERS