OUTGROWING ASTHMA

As quick as kids grow, it seems they outgrow their clothes in a matter of weeks. But did you know they can also outgrow diseases like asthma? As doctors have a pretty good idea of which kids will outgrow asthma and which ones will have to deal with it for life.

Joseph Oliver looks like a typical 13-year-old. He plays basketball in the evenings and plays the clarinet in his school band. But what's different is he has asthma.

Joseph Oliver, Asthma sufferer:
"I'm limited to everything I can do. But I try as much as I can."

Asthma affects the lungs. Airways tighten and fill with mucus -- making it difficult to breathe. It's the most common childhood chronic disease.

David Schaeffer, M.D.,:
"It affects probably some five million children and the prevalence of it has been increasing in the past ten years."

A new study from the University of Arizona says not all children will have to live with asthma for the rest of their lives.

David Schaeffer, M.D.:
"About fifty percent of children outgrow their asthma."

A child is more likely to have asthma for a lifetime if they have a persistent wheezing in their first two years of life, they have bad excema in their first two years of life, or if they still have abnormal lung function at age ten. For Joseph, the news isn't good.

David Schaeffer, M.D.:
"He's thirteen and he still has active asthma symptoms and so he probably is not among the fifty percent who will outgrow it during his teenage years."

Joseph Oliver:
"They said once that it probably would come back but you can't let it hold you down."

The good news is in the last two years, Joseph's asthma has improved. Doctors hope that by determining which children will have asthma for life, it will help to determine the best form of treatment. Dr. Schaeffer says asthma has always been an underdiagnosed disease. If your child coughs every day or has a wheeze along with the cough, he says it's a good idea to have your doctor check it out.

Apples; Fish During Pregnancy Protect Kids From Asthma and Allergies

Pregnant women who eat apples and fish may protect their children against asthma and allergies. Researchers from the University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom found the children of mothers who ate the most apples were less likely to have asthma by age 5 than the children of mothers who had the lowest apple consumption. Children of mothers who ate fish once or more a week were less likely to have had eczema than children of mothers who never ate fish. Researcher Saskia Willers, M.Sc., of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, says previous studies in the same children have found evidence of similar protective effects of vitamin E and D and zinc during pregnancy. She says if the new results are confirmed, "recommendations on dietary modification during pregnancy may help to prevent childhood asthma and allergy."

Sniffing Out Asthma
An "electronic nose" may one day be used to diagnose asthma, say researchers from Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. The device contains sensors that react to compounds in a person's exhaled breath that may be used as markers of lung disease. The electronic nose is a newer version of a sensor that has been used in the food, wine and perfume industries. It is also being used as an aid against terrorism, to sniff out explosives or toxic chemicals in the air ... and being used to diagnose lung cancer. In this new study, the nose was used to detect smell prints in asthmatics, but these were people already diagnosed. Researchers say, "The next step is to see whether the nose can diagnose new patients with asthma. It's still a futuristic device -- one day different electronic noses may be built to detect specific diseases."

Inhaled Steroids Not Enough for Kids
Some kids can't control their asthma even with corticosteroids -- the gold standard -- report researchers from Children's Hospital Boston. In fact, they found children who reported consistently using them were actually 20-percent less likely to say their asthma was well controlled compared to kids who didn't use inhaled steroids -- even when asthma severity was taken into account. Researchers say, "Future studies are needed to see what is different about children who don't respond to steroids, to see if there is a way to predict whether a child will respond to inhaled steroids."

Obesity and Asthma
Of people with asthma, those who are obese are 66-percent more likely to report severe symptoms than their thinner counterparts. In this new study, researchers report obese patients were:

6 percent more likely to report having asthma symptoms all the time
7 percent less likely to be in asthma remission
2 percent more likely to have severe persistent asthma

There have been many previous studies on the link between obesity asthma, but researchers say there has been little data on asthma severity and obesity. They add while it's not known for sure how asthma and obesity are linked, it may be from an association between the hormone leptin, which regulates body weight, and inflamed airways in asthmatics.

Source: Ivanhoe Newswire