This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Asthma affected children born in US more than foreign-born children
Woodin M. J Immigr Minor Health. 2010;doi:10.1007/s10903-010-9407-8.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Low socioeconomic status and exposure to pests such as mice and cockroaches were associated with childhood asthma among children born in the United States, but not among children born outside of the country, according to researchers from Tufts University.
Doug Brugge, PhD, professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, and colleagues conducted five studies from 2002 to 2007 by administering questionnaires to children and their parents in Boston’s Chinatown and Dorchester area. A total of 962 children aged 4 to 18 years were sampled. For the current study, the researchers pooled the data from all five studies.
They found that children born in the United States who were exposed to pests were 60% more likely to have asthma than the children not exposed to pests. Pest exposure had no significant effect on children born outside of the United States. Also, children in the United States with low socioeconomic status were twice as likely to have asthma as children without a low socioeconomic status. Similarly, socioeconomic status had no effect on asthma risk in children born outside of the United States.
“We are interested in the hygiene hypothesis as a possible explanation for these phenomena,” the researchers wrote. “This hypothesis postulates that children born in less developed countries, where sanitary conditions are compromised, are exposed to childhood infections, which in turn, have a protective effect against development of asthma and autoimmune diseases.”
Neither race nor sex was associated with an asthma diagnosis. Children born in the United States more often reported a family history of asthma compared with children born outside of the United States.