Burden of asthma-like symptoms and a lack of recognition of asthma in Vietnamese children

Abstract

Objective

Lack of recognition of asthma in childhood results in unmet asthma treatment needs and leads to the risk of sub-optimal respiratory health. The present study assessed the prevalence of asthmatic under-recognition in middle school children in Vietnam.

Methods

We conducted a school-based survey among 15,112 Vietnamese children. Most of them are aged from 13 to 14. Schools and students were recruited using multi-stage sampling. Respiratory symptoms were collected via self-report using a standardized tool from the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood. Under-recognition of asthma was defined as a presence of at least one asthma-like symptom but a negative response to having ever asthma. Associations were investigated using logistic regression.

Results

Prevalence of asthma-like symptoms was 27.3% and prevalence of physician-diagnosed asthma was 8.5%. Over 80% of symptomatic children were not diagnosed with asthma. Under-recognition of asthma was found more in girls (adjusted odds ratio; aOR = 1.75; 95%CI: 1.54 to 1.98).

Conclusions

Asthma is significantly under-recognized in Vietnamese middle-school children. Urgent action is required to improve the recognition of asthma in Vietnam.

Keywords:

• Asthma
• children
• under-recognition
• Vietnam
• ISAAC

Acknowledgements

The authors thank to Department of Education and Training, Department of Health and twenty-four secondary schools in Ho Chi Minh City for facilitating data collection. We thank to children participants for their vital participation to the study. We thank to local research team members (Faculty of Public Health, University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City) for their support to organize the survey and data collection.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest relevant to this article to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a collaborative research project between Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development [NAFOSTED—Grant ID. NHMRC.108.03–2018.04] and National Health and Medical Research Council [NHMRC—Grant ID. APP1155241].