Archive for the 'CHILDHOOD ASTHMA' Category

Children who are overweight or obese at ages six and seven have a heightened risk of developing asthma symptoms such as shortness of breath by the time they reach age eight according to recent study results in the Netherlands have shown.

Those who are able to reach a normal weight by ages six or seven do not have the increased risk by age eight even if they were overweight previously.

National Institute for Public health and the Environment in Bilthoven Dr. Salome Scholtens said in a statement that the study results show that overweight children are at high risk to develop asthma symptoms versus their thinner and generally healthier counterparts.

The study included 3756 parents all of whom had children under the age of eight. The researchers requested parents report their child’s regular weight and any breathing difficulties or wheezing they noticed.

The children were tested at the end of the study for sensitivity of their airways to inhaled allergies.

The findings were that children who are overweight at age six or seven had a 68% higher risk of developing breathing difficulties and were 66% more likely to be diagnosed with ‘twitchy’ airways. Those with a normal rate were not placed at any additional risk.

Actually, when you are with kids there is no guarantee that they will not face any health risk.

So, just imagine what will be the condition of your asthmatic kid in your absence? It will be very frightening to even think of it.

That’s why it is very essential for you to educate your kid with emergency asthma tips.

Here are few tips that can help you in your task of educating your kid about asthma.

Teach them controlled breathing

It is quite possible for your asthmatic kid to often struggle to catch his breathe. In fact, it is a condition that makes asthma much worse.

So, be sure to teach him how to control his breath so that he can feel much better when he encounter an asthma attack.

Teach how to relax

Be sure that your child knows how to relax himself when he encounters serious asthma attack. Tell him not to undergo extreme stress that can trigger asthma attack.

Teach him how to use inhalers

It is very essential for your child to know how to use inhalers when he has an asthma attack so that whenever he experiences asthma attack, he can control the condition going worse.

Traffic pollution, especially in cities, adversely affects respiratory health in children with asthma.

A study published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Respiratory Research has found that in this vulnerable group, worsening of respiratory symptoms requiring recurrent additional treatment.

A Mexican research team led by Dr Isabelle Romieu of the Institute Nacional de Sauld Publica, correlated pollutants associated with exacerbation of respiratory symptoms in asthmatic children.

Earlier studies suggest that traffic pollution, and diesel particles in particular, may have a greater effect on respiratory health than other pollutants.

This is significant as a large proportion of pollution in cities originates from motor vehicles. At present, no studies have clearly linked different types of vehicular traffic exhaust to respiratory health of either asthmatic or healthy children.

147 asthmatic children and 50 non-asthmatic children, between the ages of 6 and 14, were recruited through a paediatric hospital in Mexico City.

Parents kept a daily record of coughing and wheezing experienced by their children, as well as medication usage.

Atmospheric levels of the pollutants ozone, nitrogen dioxide and diesel particles were recorded in Mexico City during the study.

Read more at Medical News Today

A link between breast feeding and a lower incidence in asthma in young children has discovered by University of Sunderland academic.

Dr Mohammad Shamssain and his research team recently completed a two phase study into the prevalence and severity of asthma in children in the North-East.

Their research focussed specifically on the positive benefits of breast feeding in the prevention of asthma, and also the effect of obesity on the prevalence of asthma among young children.

Dr Shamssain and his team analysed 7,000 school children in the region aged 6-15 years.

The team discovered that children who had been breast fed for six months or more had a significantly reduced risk of asthma - particularly among young boys.

Dr Shamssain says: “Breastfed children showed lower prevalence rates of asthma, allergic rhinitis and eczema, and the effect of breast feeding was more evident in boys than girls.

Asthma and wheeze were resolved significantly earlier in breastfed children than those who were not breastfed.”

The University of Sunderland team discovered that breast feeding lowers the incidence of allergic disorders, and that children breast fed from 4-9 months had a significantly lower risk of asthma. Those breast fed up to 7-9 months had lower instances of persistence wheezing and coughing.

When your child has asthma, as a parent it is your responsibility to ensure s/he knows exactly what is going on.

It may not be scary for him when it starts, but as the time goes by, s/he may become worried and depressed, if s/he doesn’t understand the whys and wherefores.

As your child will have to deal with asthma throughout his/her life, it is best to take the secrecy out of what is wrong with their respiratory system and involve them in the aspects of the treatment.

Don’t go behind closed doors with doctors or teachers because this may scare them even more.

Discuss the child’s health condition with him/her and explain that it is nothing to be depressed about. Let them know that they are the same wonderful kids as they have always been, but things will be a little different from now.

Useful tips to prepare your kids for an asthma attack

1. Educate your kids about the most serious asthma attacks. Some children may experience only minor difficulties with breathing, while others have most serious and intense asthma attacks. To be on safe side, explain the most serious asthma symptoms to them. But remember, don’t scare them!

According to new research, children with asthma whose parents have high expectations for their ability to function normally, are less likely to have symptoms than other children dealing with the condition.

A new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Boston University, has found parents’ expectations and perceptions are key factors which influence how well their children’s asthma is controlled, and how effectively they use medications.

Dr. Tracy Lieu, the study’s senior author says raising parents’ expectations for how well their children can do with asthma may be one of the keys to reducing racial/ethnic disparities in asthma outcomes.

The research also revealed that children are more likely to use asthma controller medications appropriately if they have a routine for taking medicine and if their parents clearly understand how well symptoms can be controlled.

Asthma is one of the most common childhood chronic illnesses and the most frequent cause of children’s hospitalization and racial and ethnic minorities and families of low socioeconomic status are at increased risk of having poorly controlled asthma.

For the study, the investigators surveyed more than 700 parents of children aged 2 to 12 years with persistent asthma.

Children with asthma face a number of barriers to participation in physical activity, from family beliefs to school disorganization to their own misperceptions about their symptoms, the authors of a new research review say.

But given the multiple benefits of exercise, Dr. Brian Williams of the University of Dundee in Scotland and colleagues conclude, physical activity is essential to kids with asthma, and efforts must be made to remove these barriers.

Research has shown that exercise can boost aerobic fitness in asthmatic children, and may also have psychological benefits as well, they report in the journal BMC Family Practice.

“The overwhelming majority of studies show that people with asthma can exercise safely if medicated appropriately and can significantly improve their cardiovascular fitness and quality of life by doing so,” they add.

To investigate the level of physical activity among children with asthma, Williams and his team undertook a review of medical literature, including 61 studies in their analysis.

Several studies showed that children and young people with asthma do tend to be less active than their peers without the disease. One study even found that pre-schoolers with wheezing were less active than their classmates without asthma.

Babies born by Cesarean section may have a moderately increased risk of developing asthma compared with those born naturally, Norwegian researchers report after investigating this link in a population-wide study.

Dr. Mette C. Tollanes, of the University of Bergen, in Norway, and colleagues looked at the modes of delivery among more than 1.7 million single births reported to the Medical Birth Registry of Norway between 1967 and 1998.

They used registry data from Norway’s National Insurance Scheme to determine the number of children who, through the age of 18 or the year 2002, developed severe asthma.

Between 1967 and 1998, asthma risk was about 50 percent higher among children born by C-section compared with children born spontaneously and vaginally, the researchers report.

They found 19 percent increased risk among children born by vaginal delivery requiring the use of instruments (forceps or vacuum).

From 1988 through 1998, when the birth registry designated between emergency and planned C-section deliveries, unexpected differences emerged.

Compared with spontaneous vaginal deliveries during this period, emergency C-sections carried higher asthma risk (59 percent) than planned C-sections (42 percent increased risk). Instrument-assisted vaginal deliveries brought a 14 percent increased asthma risk during this 10-year period.

What could be the most terrible thing than seeing your child out of breath and almost wheezing his/her lungs out for breath.

Gasping for breath is the most common condition for asthma in toddlers.

If you think childhood asthma is terrible, then it is very essential for you to realize that asthma in toddlers is most horrible.

For most of the children who are suffering from asthma, treatment is as necessary as when they were toddlers. So, it is very essential for your kid to get tested for asthma as soon as possible.

Recent study has proved that more than five million children are suffering with asthma, in which 1,73,000 are suffering from severe manifestations.

Cold or asthma?

Most of you might get confused with normal cold and asthma in toddlers. These tips can be useful for you in identifying those signs of asthma in your kid. Some of them include:

• Asthma in toddlers is mainly characterized with persistent cough which sounds like as if the lungs are crammed.
• Very rarely, the cough involved in asthma will come out as wheezing.
• Flaring nostrils can be due to the inflammation in the air passages.

It is difficult to manage asthma in infants because no signs and symptoms of asthma are alike for everyone.

As per studies, asthma in infants and children is on the increasing side, but exactly what the reason of this increasing trend is not known.

However, there are various factors that are contributing for this rise, which include air pollution, second hand smoke exposure, and deficiency in nutrition.

Although the asthma is same in infants and adults, asthma in infants triggering factors are freezing air, over stimulation or excitement, rapid changes in temperature, stress, allergens (dander, dust, insect, etc), and many more.

It is predicted that approximately eighty percent of the children are developing their first asthma symptoms before age 5 and it is difficult to diagnose asthma in infants and children below age 5 as the signs of other illnesses are similar.

Other conditions such as pneumonia, cystic fibrosis, bronchitis, cold, gastroesophageal reflux, etc have similar symptoms of wheezing and coughing. So, it is wise of not coming to the conclusion that the child has asthma and going for any long-term asthma treatment.

Since all wheezing and coughing is not caused by asthma, treating infants with asthma medication is not correct.