Asthma among children is now higher than adults, a total of 1.1 percent increase in asthma rate was noted from 2001-2010. Over 10 million children below 18 years old were diagnosed with asthma.
Prevalence among black American children has increased compared with white Americans and Hispanic Race. It also shows that females have a higher asthma rate than males.
Asthma is a chronic obstructive airway disorder. It is characterized by reversible airflow obstruction also called as asthma attack where the child experiences difficulty in breathing due to hyperactivity or inflammation of the airway. Chest tightness, wheezing, cough and shortness of breath are usually the symptoms of the exacerbation.
According to American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology, 1 out of 10 children has asthma. Most of them missed an average of 4 school days every time an exacerbation occurs. Almost 50% increase of asthma rates occurred from the period of 2001-2010 among black American Children which also made them have the highest asthma rates among other American races.
It also showed that children that came from a low-income family have a greater rate of having asthma due to exposures on different allergen such as tobacco smoke, dust-mite, poor indoor air quality and cockroaches as posted in The Washington Post.
Recently, reports showed that asthma exacerbation was increased though there is the availability of injectable and intranasal influenza vaccine. Even the Seasonal influenza vaccine cannot prevent an asthma attack. Despite these study result, Emergency Depart visits were stable from 2001-2009 and caused to a decrease asthma morbidity rate in the hospital. A total of 693 children were hospitalized due to seasonal influenza has asthma from 2003-2009.A study also showed that the death rate among female children is 30% higher than males and 16 percent of the total pediatric influenza-related death rate was caused by asthma between the year 2004-2012.
