Chest
Clinical InvestigatlonsRespiratory Symptoms Related to Smoking Habits of Family Adults
Section snippets
Methods
The Tucson Epidemiological Study of Obstructive Lung Diseases is a longitudinal study of a stratified cluster random sample of Anglo-white households in the community. Methods of study have been described in detail elsewhere4 The final sample consisted of 3,484 Anglo-white individuals from a total 1,655 households. Each individual within the household completed a self-administered questionnaire, which contained information on demographic characteristics, medical history, respiratory history,
Results
Children in households with present smokers have higher overall rates of persistent cough, persistent phlegm, wheezing on most days, and physician-confirmed “asthma, bronchial trouble, or emphysema” than those children in households with only ex-smokers or those who never smoked, as seen in Table 1. Although the trend exists for all of the conditions, only the trend for persistent cough was statistically significant. The results for all adult nonsmokers are also seen in Table 1. There was no
Discussion
The results from this study do not indicate the same significance of social status, family size, or specific age of children in relation to the effect of household smoking on children's symptoms that Colley1 found, but they do confirm that symptoms within the adults of the household definitely appear to influence the symptoms reported for the children.
This finding has far-reaching significant ramifications related to both the reporting of symptoms in children and factors which may be
References (4)
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(1974)Respiratory symptoms and ventilatory function: A family study
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(1969)
Cited by (0)
Supported by Specialized Center of Research grant HL 14136 from the National Heart and Lung Institute.
Manuscript received June 2; revision accepted July 31.