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High School Students with Asthma More Likely to Smoke and Use Inhalants: Presented at AAP

By Brian Reid

WASHINGTON, DC -- October 13, 2005 -- High school students with asthma are more likely to use inhaled substances, including cigarettes and inhalants, than their peers without asthma, underscoring the importance of provider vigilance in treating older children, according to research presented here at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition.

Lani Wheeler, Medical Officer, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, United States, presented data on October 8^th from the 2003 National Risk Behavior Survey.

For the survey, 15,240 questionnaires were completed by 9^th to 12^th graders in 158 schools around the U.S.

Results show that current frequent cigarette use was 12.4% in students with asthma and 9.6% in students without asthma. Lifetime marijuana use was higher, with 47.2 asthmatic students trying the drug as compared with 41% of those without asthma. And lifetime inhalant use was 14.5% in students with asthma and 11.5% in their non-asthmatic peers.

"We know that adolescents have a sense of invulnerability," Dr. Wheeler said, "and they may not be paying attention to the management of chronic diseases, including asthma."

The differences were even greater among high school students with current asthma as compared to peers who did not have asthma. Asthmatic children were also more likely to be overweight (14.8% vs. 11.6%) and spend more than 3 hours a day using a computer for non-school related work.

In addition, Dr. Wheeler presented data that high school students with asthma may be more likely to die of their asthma in school than younger students. Dr. Wheeler and her colleagues examined media reports and death certificates to track 38 deaths that occurred between 1990 and 2003 in school, at a school-sponsored event or en route.

Of those deaths 17 (45%) were in high school students. "People were surprised to find a lot of students dying with asthma were in this older school," Dr. Wheeler said, a findings which suggests that schools had focused their attention to ensuring that younger, less mature students were well-managed.

She cautioned that the numbers in this study were small and that the analysis of media reports across the nation may not have caught every asthma death at school. She said that the CDC hopes to continue to update those school-based mortality figures at regular intervals.


[Presentation title: School Asthma Findings From CDC.]

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