Kids’ asthma rates quiet down; overall 2001-13 decline seen but nuanced

There’s finally some good news about childhood asthma in the United States: After rising for decades, the number of children with the breathing disorder has finally stopped increasing and may have started falling, according to a government analysis.

For low-income children in particular, it’s possible that environmental risk factors like tobacco exposure, poor housing and poor indoor air quality, and indoor dust mite and cockroach exposure may make asthma more likely, said Dr. Avni Joshi of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The rate peaked in 2009 at close to 10 percent, then leveled off before dropping to slightly more than 8 percent in 2013.

However, asthma still continues to rise among children in the poorer families-with more than14 percent of black children having asthma when compared to 8 percent of white children.

There was no change in asthma prevalence from 2001 to 2013 for white or Puerto Rican children or for kids living in the Northeast or West. “Previously, asthma prevalence was increasing among black children, but not white children”, said Akinbami.

Even though Latino children had the highest number of recorded asthma cases, during the duration of the study, their trend has also leveled out. To better understand the prevalence of childhood asthma in different populations, researchers stratified data based on gender, age group, race/ethnic group, family structure, poverty status, urbanicity, and geographic region of residence. Nonetheless, these findings should encourage pediatricians to be aware not only of the overall trends of childhood asthma, but, specifically, of the isolated increasing rates of asthma in children of poor communities. But by 2011, it was over 100 percent higher.

“It is good news for kids”, says Stephen Teach, Chairman of pediatrics at the Children’s National Health System in Washington. This gap in racial disparity ceased to increase in 2009.

These statistics can’t pinpoint the reasons why changes in asthma rates are happening, Akinbami said. “It’s also not surprising that asthma rates haven’t leveled off among poor children”. Additionally, the stress of poverty may have an effect on asthma risk, researchers said.