Asthma’s a disorder we understand in a lot of ways, it’s fairly common and as such doctors have a lot of experience in treating it, especially in kids. What’s fairly unique about asthma as a chronic condition is that it’s very much affected by the area a patient lives in. There will be hotspots in which more people will suffer from asthma and other areas without much of a difference geographically or socio economically that have far less.
Kids with asthma who live in hotspots are more likely to end up in the ER than kids with asthma who don’t. Scientists know this but they don’t know why and in a recent study they aimed to find out. They did this by using a set of 195 asthmatic children living in equal measure within and outside of asthma hotspots. What they found was that in most cases where those children had needed to visit the ER they hadn’t used an inhaler before exercise, they also found that the kids in the hotspots had been to the ER with respiratory issues far more often than those who didn’t live in those hotspots.
That was all they found. The reason behind the hotspots remains a mystery. They tested the air quality and the relative rates of pollen, they checked to see if some areas had better access to exercise grounds and even to see if perhaps the wind had something to do with it. All of these things came back negative and this has left scientists perplexed and bemused.
Obviously the researchers involved are going to keep looking into this study but without any leads at all it’s rather trial and error which isn’t massively scientific. One thing we can say for sure is that, if your kid has asthma then they need to use their inhaler before they partake in any exercise!
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