Chest
Passive Smoking and the Seasonal Difference of Severity of Asthma in Children
Section snippets
Population
The series included every child with asthma or a wheezy chest who was aged 7 to 17 years and had been referred to one of us (ABM) at the Children's Hospital in Vancouver.
There were 247 subjects. Of these, 160 were being seen for the first time, and 87 had been examined on a previous occasion; they were being reassessed at the request of their primary care physicians. For both new and old patients only the data recorded at the initial visit during the period Nov 1, 1983, to May 31, 1986, were
RESULTS
The two groups of children were comparable for the following features: age; male-female ratio; the duration of asthma; the occurrence, during the preceding two weeks, of a respiratory infection, a condition that may have influenced lung function test results; the taking of recent medication; and the percentage with a positive skin prick test to an inhalant allergen, an indication of atopy (Table 1). The two groups did differ, however, in the mean diameter of the wheal produced by a skin prick
DISCUSSION
The results suggest that passive smoking in the home worsens bronchial irritability and narrows the bronchi in asthmatic children. These changes were more marked in the children of mothers who smoked, compared with those of mothers who did not smoke, as reported in our previous study.17 The likelihood that it was passive smoking that caused the increased severity of asthma in the children of smokers, rather than some other difference between them and the children of nonsmokers, was strengthened
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank Mr. Ronnie Sizto for computer programming, Mrs. Janice Fuller, R.N., for interviewing patients, and Mrs. Huguette Brown for performing the tests.
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Supported in part by a grant from the British Columbia Lung Association.
Manuscript received November 13; revision accepted March 21.