Asthma in children

Who's at risk?

Some children are more likely than others to get asthma. This is because they have certain risk factors.

Risk factors are things that increase a person's chance of getting an illness.

Having parents who smoke increases a child's risk of getting asthma. There's a risk from:

Smoking during pregnancy. If a woman smokes when she's pregnant the chance that her baby will get asthma increases by more than 50 percent.

Source:
Benenson AS, Chin J.
Control of communicable diseases manual.
16th edition. American Public Health Association, Washington DC, USA; 1995.

¹
Smoking around children. Children whose parents smoke are more likely to get asthma than children whose parents don't smoke.

Source:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Chapter 6. Respiratory Effects in Children from Exposure to Secondhand Smoke. In: The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General.
Available at http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/report (accessed on 9 May 2008).

²

There's a link between asthma and other allergic conditions, such as eczema and hay fever. About 1 in 3 children with eczema will go on to get asthma.

Source:
van der Hulst AE, Klip H, Brand PL.
Risk of developing asthma in young children with atopic eczema: A systematic review.
Journal of Clinical Immunology. 2007; 120: 565-9.

Some studies have found a link between being treated with antibiotics as a baby and getting asthma in later life.

Source:
van der Hulst AE, Klip H, Brand PL.
Risk of developing asthma in young children with atopic eczema: A systematic review.
Journal of Clinical Immunology. 2007; 120: 565-9.

Source:
Kozyrskyj AL, Ernst P, Becker AB.
Increased risk of childhood asthma from antibiotic use in early life.
Chest. 2007; 131: 1753-1759.

⁴ But it's hard to know whether antibiotic use in babies could actually cause asthma. It might just be that when babies become wheezy, doctors may think they have a chest infection and treat them with antibiotics. So the children in the study might have been given antibiotics for a chest infection, when they really had asthma all along.

Sources for the information on this page:

Benenson AS, Chin J.Control of communicable diseases manual.16th edition. American Public Health Association, Washington DC, USA; 1995.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.Chapter 6. Respiratory Effects in Children from Exposure to Secondhand Smoke. In: The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General.Available at http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/report (accessed on 9 May 2008).

van der Hulst AE, Klip H, Brand PL.Risk of developing asthma in young children with atopic eczema: A systematic review.Journal of Clinical Immunology. 2007; 120: 565-9.

Kozyrskyj AL, Ernst P, Becker AB.Increased risk of childhood asthma from antibiotic use in early life.Chest. 2007; 131: 1753-1759.

This information was last updated on Jan 09, 2009

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