Asthma Differs In Rich, Poor Countries

Childhood Asthma Linked To Allergies Is Twice As Common In Wealthy Nations, Study Shows

(WebMD)  The link between childhood asthma and allergies may be twice as strong in rich nations compared with poorer countries.

That's according to a new study from researchers including Gudrun Weinmayr, Ph.D., of Germany's Ulm University.

They gathered data on more than 54,000 children aged 8-12 in 22 countries worldwide, including study centers in the U.K., Ghana, India, Brazil, China, Sweden, and Ecuador.

Some of the kids lived in big cities. Others lived in rural areas. Their parents reported the children's asthma symptoms. More than half of the kids also got allergy skin tests.

Asthma symptoms, such as wheeze, varied widely among the countries, ranging from less than 1 percent in Pichincha, Ecuador, to more than a quarter in Uruguaiana, Brazil.

The researchers checked the countries' gross national income and found a wealth gap in the asthma data.

Overall, in wealthier countries, kids with asthma were twice as likely to test positive for allergies as those in less affluent nations.

The numbers varied a lot from nation to nation. Near the extremes are Mumbai, India, where only 2 percent of kids with tested positive for allergies, compared with nearly 59 percent in the Netherlands.

The reasons for that pattern aren't clear. The researchers didn't have
details about all the factors that could make a child more or less likely to develop asthma and allergies, but nutrition, pollution, housing conditions, exposure to microbes, and other factors may play a role, Weinmayr's team suggests.

The findings only apply on a global scale. So don't make assumptions about links between personal wealth and children's allergies and asthma, the researchers warn.

[eggy1620]

The most obvious conclusion is that asthmatic kids with allergies simply have a higher life expectancy in the industrialized world, and thus are counted more frequently.

[incog-nito]

Or it could be that in poor countries many cases are simply not reported, that medical care is not available to a lot of people, or that unlike rich countries, parents are less likely or cannot afford to take their kids to the doctor for every little ailment.

[grammawhamma]

You are exactly right Krenz4. A sterile environment is not always a healthy environment. In richer countries people also use way to many pesticides, herbicides, and many other kinds of poisons and chemicals in their daily lives. Not healthy!!

[krenz4]

It doesnt take a rocket scientist to see what I have suspected for years, that all the antibacterial this and that to ''protect'' the little American Darlings is doing them more harm than good. The human body needs some germs to operate properly. Wealthier American children have been sanitized and sterilized so much their bodies reject anything naturally occuring in their lives.