PREVALENCE OF ASTHMA, RELATED SYMPTOMS AND RISK FACTORS IN CHILDREN YOUNGER THAN 5 YEARS

Abstract

Asthma is the most prevalent chronic disease in childhood. To determine the prevalence of asthma and related symptoms in children younger than 5 years, a survey was performed by interviewing mothers of 617 children during spring 2001. The interview comprised of two parts. The first part contained children characteristics including age, sex, maternal age at the child birth, child history of atopy, maternal history of smoking during pregnancy, existence of household smoker, history of family asthma or family atopy. The second part contained asthma section of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) questionnaire. The overall cumulative and 12 month prevalences of wheezing were 21.9% and 19.4%, respectively. The prevalences of exercise-induced wheezing, dry cough without respiratory infections or physician-diagnosed asthma were 18.9%, 11.8% and 3.9%,respectively. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed a higher prevalence of history of wheezing or exercise-induced wheezing in male sex and in the children with positive history of atopy. Persistent cough unrelated to respiratory infections was strongly associated with the positive history of atopy in the children or maternal age at the child birth less than 20 yr or more than 30 yr. Furthermore a physician-diagnosed asthma was significantly associated with positive history of atopy in child. The results suggest a relatively high prevalence of history of wheezing or current and exercise-induced wheezing, but underdiagnosis of asthma among studied children needs more studies to be confirmed.