Myths about asthma control in children

  Asthma in children is a chronic inflammatory disease of the respiratory tract involving a variety of factors. Asthma attacks often seriously affect the normal life and learning of the affected children, leading to growth and developmental disorders and even psychological disorders, and the recurrent attacks and improper treatment of asthma also impose a heavy economic burden on families and society. At present, the incidence of asthma is on the rise year by year. According to statistics, the cumulative prevalence of asthma among children aged 0 to 14 years in Shanghai increased from 1.73% to 5.92% in the 16 years from 1990 to 2006, an increase of 3.4 times. Asthma has become a serious public health problem.  However, many parents have many misconceptions about the prevention and treatment of asthma in their children, and I will introduce them one by one in the series of reports.  First, many parents believe that asthma can be cured without treatment. Indeed, there are many children who grow up with recurrent wheezing without long-term medication. Not only parents, but also some doctors may think so. In fact, not all children who wheeze have asthma, Director Yu introduced, children wheeze into three types, early transient wheeze; early onset of persistent wheeze; late-onset wheeze.  Early transient wheezing is mostly seen in children born prematurely and whose parents smoke, mainly due to poor lung development, and most of this type of wheezing gradually disappears after the age of three; early onset persistent wheezing is mainly related to recurrent viral infections, such as respiratory syncytial virus, rhinovirus infection, etc., the child does not have atopic constitution, and there is no family history of allergic diseases, the wheezing symptoms of these children generally last until school age will disappear. Some children still have symptoms at the age of 12 years; the last type of wheezing is delayed wheezing, which has a typical atopic background, such as a history of infantile eczema and a parent’s history of asthma, etc. These children are the ones with asthma, and if not treated regularly, asthma symptoms will continue into adulthood.  It can be seen that the “asthma” that is naturally cured after growing up is not really asthma, but is early transient wheezing or early onset persistent wheezing. In fact, there are two peak periods for the onset of asthma, one is during childhood and the other is after the age of 50. Many people who have childhood asthma can remain free for many years as adults, but then have asthma attacks in their later years, which can seriously affect their daily lives.