"Health News - Medicine, Diet and Fitness"

By Lindsay Braun, Ivanhoe Men’s health Correspondent

ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — Inner-city children who are diagnosed with asthma need more frequent checks ups to keep their symptoms under control.

New research from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, M.D., reveals children living in urban areas should have four or more check-ups a year after an asthma diagnosis. Current asthma guidelines suggest a follow up doctor’s visit one to six months after a diagnosis, but the new findings suggest six months may be too long to wait.

“The doctors are being told to see the sicker kids more frequently. But I think this one to six month range may be too broad … even for the kids who are doing quite well,” Greg Diette, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, told Ivanhoe.

A group of 150 asthmatic children between the ages of two and six, from Baltimore were studied. Almost half of the children had worsening asthma symptoms as early as three months after their initial diagnoses. Even children who suffered from mild asthma at their time of diagnosis worsened significantly enough to require new drugs or different dosages.

“The most striking thing was the kids who were in the best category, mild to intermittent, the ones we tend to relax about, 46 percent of them ended up getting worse as early as three months later,” Dr. Diette said.

Researchers believe severe asthma prevalence in inner-city children is caused by environmental factors like pollution, exposure to allergens like mice and cockroaches, heightened exposure to cigarette smoke and car fumes. Poor access to Men’s health care may also be a factor. “All of the kids we studied have an asthma doctor, but their care wasn’t always ideal. There needs to be a level of control, and then appropriate medication to go along with that,” Dr. Diette said.

Disease control may be the key to keeping children out of the emergency room. Research shows children with poorly controlled asthma are three-times more likely to end up in the doctor’s office or emergency room than children who’s disease is under control. To maintain control, doctors and parents should be more attentive to keeping up with three-month check-ups regardless of whether the child is experiencing symptoms or not. 

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, which offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, click on: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.

SOURCE: Ivanhoe interview with Greg Diette, M.D.; Pediatrics, 2007;120:1174-1181

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Aid / Disasters, Allergy, Diabetes, Medical News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.