From The American Lung Association
I'm over a month late in sharing this one (it sort of got lost in my folder). There is a lot of good information here, so better late than never...
JUNE 2007
This digest is brought to you by the American Lung Association®,
engaged in a mission to prevent lung disease and promote lung health for more than 100 years.
IN THIS ISSUE:
>Infant Swimming: Chlorine Lung Risk?
>Antibiotic Use in Infants May Up Asthma Risk
>At Risk: Hostile Outlook May Affect Breathing, Research Shows
>Warnings of Bad Air Are Not to Be Ignored
>Asthma Updates
>New on www.LungUSA.org
WE NEED YOUR HELP!
The American Lung Association needs your help as we work to improve our work to benefit children with asthma. We are conducting a survey among parents of children with asthma to gather information related to their experiences with schools.
Will you help us? The online survey should take just a few minutes to complete and will give us valuable information we need to focus our work. Take our survey now.
Bernadette A. Toomey Named President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Lung Association
ELSEWHERE IN ASTHMA NEWS
Infant Swimming: Chlorine Lung Risk?...WebMD Medical News reported on June 4, 2007 that infant swimming lessons may lead to problems with children's lung development and possibly make asthma more likely, a new study suggests. The researchers included Alfred Bernard, PhD, of the public health department at Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, Belgium. They studied 341 Belgian schoolchildren who were about 11 years old, on average. The children provided blood samples and had their lung health tested. Bernard's team noted that 43 of the children had taken infant swimming lessons in indoor pools. The researchers also noted other lung health hazards, including maternal smoking during pregnancy and exposure to secondhand smoke. The lungs of children who had had infant swimming lessons appeared to be predisposed to developing asthma and recurrent bronchitis, according to the study, which appears in Pediatrics.
For the full article, click here.
Antibiotic Use in Infants May Up Asthma Risk...HealthDay News reported on June 11, 2007 that giving antibiotics for a non-respiratory tract infection to an infant younger than 1 greatly increases the odds that the child will develop asthma, according to new research. The study found that the risk was highest for those infants who received multiple courses of antibiotics and those who received prescriptions for broad-spectrum antibiotics. Broad-spectrum antibiotics tend to kill a wide range of bacteria -- both good and bad. Each year, about 4 million American children have active asthma, resulting in about 14 million missed school days, according to the American Lung Association. Because asthma can't currently be cured, only controlled, researchers are focusing on factors that may play a role in the initial development of the lung disease.
For the full article, click here.
At Risk: Hostile Outlook May Affect Breathing, Research Shows...The New York Times, June 19, 2007 - Having a hostile attitude may affect your breathing, a new study reports. Skip to next paragraphUsing a sample of 4,629 healthy adults ages 18 to 30, researchers determined hostility using a 50-item questionnaire and then administered breathing tests to record objective measures of breathing efficiency and lung capacity. The study appears in the May issue of Health Psychology. After controlling for age, height, socioeconomic status, smoking and asthma, high scores on the hostility test were consistently associated with low scores on the measures of lung function in black men and women and in white women. The more hostile the person was, the more lung function declined. For each one-fifth increase in scores on the hostility questionnaire, there was a corresponding decrease in scores on the breathing tests. The association was not statistically significant in white men.
For the full article, click here
Click here to sign up for an Asthma Walk near you. The American Lung Association Asthma Walk special event program is nationally presented by GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) and nationally sponsored by Hybrid Synergy Drive (Toyota).
View the Video: Dr. Edelman on the importance of funding asthma research
Warnings of Bad Air Are Not to Be Ignored...Foster’s Online reported on Wednesday, June 27 2007 that the quality of our air affects everyone, especially this time of year, when so many of us are outside and the weather is heating up.The elevated levels of air pollution are a result of winds blowing into the region from the large urban areas to our southwest and from the industrial Midwest, the DES said in issuing the warning. Temperatures in the 90s and bright sunshine are also contributing factors since they aid in the production of air pollutants. Conditions are expected to improve on Thursday, as cooler, cleaner air moves into the region.Air pollution has an effect on people's health, even at lower, supposedly safe levels. A recent study by researchers at the University of New Hampshire shows that poor air quality lowers worker productivity, and most people do not change their behavior despite suffering from a host of symptoms, including breathing trouble.
For the full article, click here
The American Lung Association supports the Asthma Control Test and wants everyone 12 years of age and older with asthma to take it, no matter how well controlled you think your asthma is. Click here to take the test yourself or share the test with a friend.
Asthma updates...Health, Science and Environment reported on Wednesday, June 27, 2007 that treatment alternatives for asthma are always under study. A recent report said that asthma sufferers may be able to cut their use of inhaled corticosteroids and still prevent attacks by using a combination drug or a once-a-day pill, which may pose fewer long-term risks. In the American Lung Association study, appearing in the May 17 New England Journal of Medicine, a single inhaled dose of the combination drug Advair worked as well as two doses of the steroid fluticasone (Flovent). For some patients, the combo drug can reduce asthma attacks and discomfort they may encounter if they skip doses of the steroids because of side effects, said Dr. Eliana Mendes, a researcher at the University of Miami medical school who worked on the study.
For the full article, click here.
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NEW ON WWW.LUNGUSA.ORG
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American Lung Association Asthma Clinical Research Centers
Make a Memorial Donation
Sign up for our latest e-newsletter - The Promise of Research
Take the Asthma Control Test!
The news stories summarized in The Breathe Easy®/Asthma Digest are taken from secondary sources. The American Lung Association® does not verify their accuracy.
The mission of the American Lung Association is to prevent lung disease and promote lung health.
For the American Lung Association nearest you, contact 1-800-LUNGUSA or visit www.lungusa.org.
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