Study: Asthma Rampant Among Homeless NY Children
Date: 02-Mar-04
Country: USA
The 40 percent rate of asthma among the estimated 9,400 children who are homeless at any one time in the nation's largest city is six times the U.S. rate, which has been escalating in recent decades for reasons that are unclear, the researchers said.
Some say asthma rates are climbing because the respiratory illness is diagnosed more often; others blame exposure to pollutants, worsening allergies, and overuse of antibiotics.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 16 million or about 7.5 percent of Americans reported having asthma in 2002, up 4 percent from the year before. In 1980, using different criteria, the health agency said the incidence was 3 percent.
Black and Latino children have much higher rates of asthma than whites, and children from poorer backgrounds are also more susceptible to the lung ailment.
A random sample of 740 homeless children whose families entered three New York shelters from June 1998 to September 1999 found 40 percent of the children had asthma and roughly one-third of the cases had not been previously diagnosed.
"Asthma in homeless children is also likely to be severe and substantially under-treated," wrote Dr. Diane McLean of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
If asthma goes untreated with anti-inflammatory drugs it can irreversibly damage the lungs, and often leads to frequent trips to hospital emergency rooms, she wrote in the journal, The Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.