Black And Puerto Rican Children Are More Likely to Develop Asthma

Black and Puerto Rican children are more prone to developing asthma than the rest of the ethnicities and races. A recent study offers new insight on the factors that lead to asthma, and living in the pollution of the city, might not be the main cause.
There are around 6.8 million children suffering from asthma, said a statistics from the U.S.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but not all of them live in the cities. The myth that big city life contributes to children developing asthma has been demolished.

There are other factors that influence the asthma risk, and they just may sound a little weird. According to scientists at John Hopkins University from Baltimore, being black, poor or Puerto Rican are some criteria that might lead faster to developing the disease. Scientists have analyzed the asthma risks no longer from the city but looked at how the disease acts in different communities.

Their research followed a survey taken between 2009-2011, on over 23,000 children with ages starting from 6 to 17. Scientists studied the asthma rates were based on the population number, living conditions(the economic level) as well ethnicity and race. Those factors did not prove any difference in asthma development factors, in the children living in the cities compared to those who weren’t.

What came up was the fact that Puerto Rican and black children had asthma rates with 17% to 20 %higher than the Caucasian children who were at 10%, Hispanic children from other countries had 9% and Asian children had the smallest percentage, 8%. Studies believe that such differences might be on a biological or genetic account, but hasn’t been yet established.

Geographical regions were also at cause. Survey showed that there are 17% more children suffering from asthma, living in the cities in the North East, compared with the 8% living in western states cities. Another factor that dismantled the big city asthma theory, proved that asthma cases were 21% higher in the North East suburban surroundings compared to the 17% of the cities.

This researched aimed to establish whether children living in the cities were more prone to asthma than the ones who werent. Nevertheless scientists have not made a more concise introspection regarding what are the factors that aggravate asthma. One of those could very well be the pollution in the city.
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Christina Langfold

Remember that weird girl in school who never quite managed to fit in? Who was always silent and strange? That was me during my entire teenage life. A few years after finishing college (with a degree in arts) I decided that the best way to become more sociable, while also feeling safe, is to test my people skills online.