A study shows that children with asthma react differently to changes in air pollution depending on the environment in which they grow up – ScienceDaily



[ad_1]

Children with asthma who are growing up in a New York neighborhood where air pollution is prevalent need emergency medical care more often than asthmatics in less polluted areas. That's what researchers say at Columbia University in the United States in a new study published in the journal Brand Springer Nature. Pediatric research. Lead author Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir, however, warns that neighborhoods where children's asthma cases are less common should not be excluded from efforts to improve the quality of children's asthma. ;air. In fact, children living in neighborhoods where asthma is less common may be more vulnerable to the effects of air pollution.

For this study, 190 participants aged 7 to 8 years were recruited between 2008 and 2011. All participants participated in the study on asthma and allergies in the New York neighborhood and had previously been diagnosed with asthma. They have all grown up in middle-income families in neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.

Participants were grouped as neighborhoods with high numbers of asthma cases or low asthma cases. There was no significant difference between household income and access to health care (private insurance) that benefited the families of the participants. However, those who grew up in areas where asthma was more common usually lived in apartment buildings or on higher floors. They were also more likely to live in overcrowded environments and to be raised by single mothers.

Lovinsky-Desir and his colleagues found that children living in neighborhoods where asthma was more common needed emergency care more often and were more likely to suffer from exercise-induced whistling. . In addition, ambient pollutant concentrations in these neighborhoods were higher. Over the course of a year, concentrations of known air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, small airborne particles, and elemental carbon were much higher in these neighborhoods than in those having fewer cases of asthma.

An interesting discovery is that the pollution mainly affected children in neighborhoods where asthma was less prevalent, even though pollution levels were higher in the more common neighborhoods.

"In poorer neighborhoods, children exposed to air pollution were more likely to have emergency treatment for asthma, but in poorer neighborhoods, it is likely that other factors Environmental stress, such as stress and violence, have a more marked effect of urgent asthma treatment than air pollution, "says Lovinsky-Desir.

Source of the story:

Material provided by Springer. Note: Content can be changed for style and length.

[ad_2]
Source link