EDMONTON — A recent University of Alberta study is shedding more light on how perinatal health and early life events are related to asthma control in children.
“The problem is that if (childhood asthma) is not well controlled, it is a major driver of emergency hospital admissions and is within the top 10 causes of disability-adjusted life years lost among children,” says senior author Maria Ospina, adjunct professor in the U of A’s Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology and associate professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Queen’s University.
“The cost to the health-care system is also quite big,” Ospina adds. “If children do not have good asthma control, they also miss school days. So the earlier we can do things to control asthma, the better.”
Asthma is the most common childhood chronic disease, affecting up to 13 per cent of children in Canada, according to Statistics Canada. By age six, between 50 and 60 per cent of those who had preschool asthma no longer have symptoms, but even for them, their childhood asthma can have a lasting impact on their lung function as adults.
The researchers looked at data for more than 7,200 children born in Alberta from 2010 to 2012 who were diagnosed with asthma before age five. They found that antibiotic use, gestational diabetes, smoking in pregnancy, C-section birth, summer birth and severe respiratory infections in early life were all linked with an increased risk of poor control of asthma symptoms in preschoolers.
Ospina adds that it’s important not to stigmatize the behaviour of mothers. “That’s not the purpose of this work. It’s not about blaming the mother for individual exposures during pregnancy. That’s a key message here.”
She added, “by ensuring that mothers have the necessary support and information, we can promote health strategies that may help to control childhood asthma symptoms more effectively.”
To read the full story, click here. To speak with Maria Ospina, please contact:
Debra Clark
U of A communications associate
debra.clark@ualberta.ca