Does Inner-City Living Really Increase Asthma Risk?
Despite previous research suggesting a connection between inner-city living and increased risk of asthma, a new study suggests that race, ethnicity, and household income drive asthma risk, not an individual’s physical surroundings.
In order to better understand the effect of one’s physical surroundings on their risk of asthma, researchers surveyed the parents and caregivers of 23,065 children ages 6 to 17, collecting information on sex, race, ethnicity, residence in urban, suburban, medium metro, or rural areas, and household income.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
RELATED CONTENT
Could Vitamin D Help Manage Asthma Attacks?
Environmental Triggers of Asthma: NIH Guidelines
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Note: Inner-city areas were defined as urban areas with 20% or more households below the poverty line.
After their analysis, researchers found that 12.9% of inner-city children had asthma compared to 10.6% of children living in suburbs and rural areas.1,2
Once the researchers adjusted for variables such as ethnicity, race, and geographic region, the results showed that African American children (17%) and those with a Puerto Rican background (20%) had significantly higher asthma rates than those of Hispanic (9%), white (10%), and Asian (8%) children. 1,2
According to investigators, African-American and Puerto Rican children still had a heightened risk for asthma after the researchers adjusted for other influences such as household income, geographic residence, and neighborhood poverty.1
Further, some inner-city areas had lower asthma prevalence in children than their suburban and rural counterparts. In the Northeast, the study showed that asthma prevalence in low-income suburban areas was 21% compared to 17% in local urban areas. 1
“Our results highlight the changing face of pediatric asthma and suggest that living in an urban area is, by itself, not a risk factor for asthma,” they concluded.1
“Instead, we see that poverty and being African American or Puerto Rican are the most potent predictors of asthma risk.”1
The complete study is published in the January issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
-Michelle Canales
References:
1. Johns Hopkins Medicine. Time to rethink the inner-city asthma epidemic? January 15, 2015. http://www.hopkinschildrens.org/Inner-City-Asthma-Epidemic/. Accessed January 21, 2015.
2. Keet CA, McCormack MC, Pollack CE, et al. Neighborhood poverty, urban residence, race/ethnicity, and asthma: rethinking the inner-city asthma epidemic. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2015 January [epub ahead of print] doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2014.11.022.