The study gathered data on nearly 19,000 children aged between 6 and 7 and over 21 000 adolescents aged between 13 and 14. His results show that Italy – where at least one parent smokes in more than half of all households – a large proportion of children and adolescents can blame for asthma and wheezing directly to their parents.‘There is no doubt that a parent who smokes – especially a mother – child is at risk of asthma.’ Norman H. Edelman, MD, tells WebMD in an interview seeking objective comment Edelman is a consultant for scientific affairs at the American Lung Association.
Agabiti et al. and colleagues also collected data on children whose parents suffered from childhood asthma or wheezing. They found that parental smoking seems to be particularly risky for children ‘genetically predisposed’ to asthma attacks and wheezing. Vital information:
Parental smoking increases the risk of childhood asthma and the risk of wheezing in adolescents.
Maternal smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of asthma and wheezing in young children, but the effect appears to decrease the time.
The link between parents who smoke and children with asthmatic disease is not unique in Europe. They echo the results of a 1997 report by the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who believes that parents who smoke because every year from 8000 to 26,000 new cases of the United States and are the existing asthma worse in 20percent from 2 to 5 million children who have the disease.
The largest study confirms previous reports of this type: Parents who smoke increase the risk of their children, and dyspnea.
The %age of actual cases of asthma in the United States caused by parental smoking is smaller than that observed in Italy for only a small %age of American adults are smokers. ‘In the U.S., the attributable risk is lower because the prevalence of smoking is lower,’ Michael Lipsett, MD, lead author of the respiratory diseases section of the California EPA report, tells WebMD.
But Lipsett, now affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco, notes that the risk to children, even in a family of smokers was the same as a large Italian study was the analysis of several smaller U.S. studies reported in California EPA report.
‘We estimated that 15percent of current asthma cases in children . and 11percent of the time . now wheezing in adolescents are attributable to parental smoking in Italy,’ said Nera Agabiti and colleagues with the international group of epidemiologists considered collaborative group known as the cider. The group published its findings in the November issue of the journal Epidemiology.