Childhood asthma persists in most children

Last Updated: 2007-12-14 12:03:26 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Will Boggs, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - More than half the children who develop asthma before 6 years of age continue to have asthma at age 12 years, according to results of a Canadian study.

"Our study showed that 50 percent of the young children diagnosed with asthma before age 6 continued to have asthma at age 12," Dr. Teresa To from The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, told Reuters Health. "This finding does not support the common belief that children 'outgrow' asthma."

The investigators used provincial population-based data to follow young children with asthma from birth until early adolescence. The study included all children born in Ontario during 1994 and diagnosed with asthma before the age of 6 years.

Of the 34,216 asthmatic children, roughly 54 percent experienced a second asthma episode requiring hospitalization or a physician visit within the next year, the investigators report, and nearly three quarters did so within 3 years of diagnosis.

Persistent asthma at age 12 was more common among children diagnosed with asthma between 2 and 5 years of age than among those diagnosed before the age of 2 years, the report indicates, and persistent asthma was more common among boys than among girls.

Asthma persistence was also more likely in children living in cities than in children living in rural areas, but low socioeconomic status was not a risk factor.

Children with asthma diagnosed prior to age 6 years often had allergies, like hay fever and dermatitis, the researchers note, and those with allergic conditions were more likely than those without to have persistent asthma by age 12 years.

The risk of having persistent asthma was 3-fold higher among children with at least one asthma hospitalization and 2.6-fold higher among children with at least four physician visits.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, December 2007.

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