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 The team analyzed data from 25 studies that included a combined
total of more than 430,000 children. Kids with asthma who were also
exposed to second-hand smoke were 66 percent more likely to seek
emergency care and 85 percent more likely to be hospitalized than
their peers who didn’t spend time around smokers, the study found.
For asthmatic kids, breathing in cigarette smoke was also linked to
a more than tripled risk of poor lung function and 32 percent higher
odds of wheezing symptoms.
While the risk of smoke exposure exacerbating asthma symptoms is
well known, fresh evidence on the extent of the danger posed to
children may help convince some parents to abandon their cigarettes,
said senior study author Dr. Avni Joshi, an allergist and
immunologist at Mayo Clinic Children’s Center in Rochester,
Minnesota.
“There is hope that smoking cessation will help improve asthma
symptoms and health care utilization even after any duration or
extent of second-hand tobacco exposure,” Joshi said by email. “In
addition, children learn from parental behavior and they are less
likely to start smoking themselves if they do not observe parental
tobacco use.”
Globally, an estimated 235 million people suffer from asthma,
according to the World Health Organization.
Asthma is an incurable chronic disease that leads to sudden attacks
of breathlessness and wheezing. During attacks, the lining of the
bronchial tubes swells, narrowing the airways and restricting the
flow of air in and out of the lungs. Symptoms may be controlled with
medication, but asthma can become life threatening when it isn’t
properly managed.
The causes of childhood asthma aren’t clearly understood, but the
condition has been linked to exposure to cigarette smoke and other
air pollution as well as to certain airway infections that kids can
get at a very young age. Inhaled toxins can also trigger asthma
attacks, as can certain viral infections, allergies, physical
activity and changes in the weather.
One limitation of the current study is that most of the data also
came from research in more affluent countries, making it possible
that the findings might not apply to the developing world, the
authors acknowledge in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.
Researchers also lacked data on how the amount of second-hand smoke
exposure impacted the odds of hospitalization or complications.
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Even so, given that there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco
smoke, the study results aren’t surprising, said Sam Oh, a tobacco
researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.
“Tobacco smoke is a complex mixture of toxins, carcinogens and
irritants,” Oh, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
“Exposure to this brew causes immediate, measurable damage to our
blood vessels and prevents them from functioning normally, including
causing a child to have an asthma attack severe enough to warrant
hospitalization.”
Families of children with asthma face significant barriers to
keeping symptoms under control, said Dr. Annie Lintzenich Andrews, a
pediatrics researcher at the Medical University of South Carolina in
Charleston.
Parents may be juggling daily or even twice-a-day medications for
their kids to prevent asthma attacks, while also worrying about
environmental triggers such as pollen and dust mites, Andrews, who
wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. If parents smoke
themselves or know children spend a lot of time with a smoker, that
just gives them yet another thing to worry about.
“It is incredibly difficult for parents to manage all of this on top
of the stressors of everyday life,” Andrews said. “If a parent is
struggling with smoking cessation, this study could provide that
final reason they need to quit – no one wants their child to be
hospitalized for a potentially preventable problem.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1G5jeqS Annals of Allergy, Asthma and
Immunology, online September 24, 2015.
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