BOSTON GLOBE
As an epidemic of asthma left more and more children wheezing during the past two decades, scientists blamed everything from obesity to cockroach droppings to the way we build our houses.
Now, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital have identified another potential cause: child abuse.
The Brigham doctors discovered that children in Puerto Rico who endure physical or sexual abuse are twice as likely to suffer from asthma as youngsters who do not face maltreatment. Abuse, the researchers found, was a more powerful predictor of whether a child would develop asthma than if a family was rich or poor.
Stress recently has been implicated as a trigger for asthma. And the Boston researchers said they believe that the extreme strain caused by abuse — and the hormonal changes that result — may predispose children to worse bouts of the disease, which ignites chest-rattling coughs and chronic shortness of breath. It is believed to be the first time researchers have established a possible link between child abuse and asthma.
The Brigham scientists, who collaborated with specialists from Columbia University and the University of Puerto Rico, focused on Puerto Rican children because they are more likely to have asthma and to die from the disease than any other U.S. youngsters, regardless of whether they live on the island or the mainland.
Roughly 25 percent of Puerto Rican children are diagnosed with asthma at some point during childhood, compared with 13 percent of white, non-Hispanic children and 16 percent of black youngsters.
"The question is, why?" asked Dr. Juan Celedsn, a lung specialist in the Brigham's Channing Laboratory. "Is this heredity? Is this environmental factors? Is this some behavioral or lifestyle factor?"
The researchers questioned about 1,200 children and their parents. Before they agreed to participate in the study, families were told that some questions would pertain to abuse and that authorities would be alerted if a child reported having been struck violently or subjected to sexual abuse.
Asthma was significantly more common among children who said they had faced abuse in the previous year, with 20 percent suffering from the respiratory ailment. Among children who had not sustained abuse, the asthma rate was 11.5 percent.
Still, abused children represented only a small fraction of the total number with asthma.
"It's very clear it's a very complex disease," Celedsn said. "By no means should we say abuse is responsible for a majority of the cases. And I don't want this to stigmatize Puerto Ricans or other parents who have children with asthma."
The crazy thing is that its true what these researchers say I was diagnosed with asthma right around the time of my sexual abuse.
.jpg)
Find sex offenders near me
No comments:
Post a Comment