Burden of asthma among inner-city children from Southern Brazil

Abstract

Objective: To assess the impact of asthma in a population of inner-city Brazilian children. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, we selected children with asthma and healthy controls from public schools (8–16 years) from a capital city of Southern Brazil. Divided into three phases, questionnaires were administered, assessing lung function, body mass index and allergic sensitization. Results: From 2500 children initially included in the study (48.4% males; mean age of 11.42 ± 2.32 years), asthma prevalence was detected in 28.6% (715/2500). The disease was not controlled in 42.7% (305/715) of the children, with 7.6% of hospitalization rate. School absenteeism (at least one day of missing school because of asthma) and sedentary behavior were high (57.1 and 67.2%, respectively), with 47.9% of subjects requiring oral steroids in the previous year, and physical well-being significantly lower than controls, directly interfering with quality of life, and therefore in the daily activities of these students. Moreover, 38% of the parents admitted to being non-adherent to treatment with their children and 31.1 and 53.6%, respectively, believed that rescue medication and exercise might be harmful. Conclusions: The burden of asthma in Brazilian children seems to be substantial. New international guidelines with a special focus in developing countries settings, with more pragmatic approaches, should be a priority for discussion and implementation actions.

• Atopy
• allergy
• prevalence
• childhood
• Latin America

Declaration of interest

We declare that all authors contributed substantially to the conception, design, analysis and interpretation of manuscript data, manuscript draft or critical review of the content, with the approval of the final version. In addition, we report that any part of this work was not published elsewhere, no author has any commercial relationships in which may lead to conflict of interests, and all authors assigned the manuscript copyright of the Journal of Asthma. Our study was supported by Novartis Pharmaceuticals (Brazil), as an investigator-initiated study.