Asthma: Disadvantaged children at greater risk of the condition persisting into adulthood

Children with asthma who spent the early years of their life living in a social disadvantaged environment, have a greatly increased risk of the condition persisting into adulthood, experts believe.

A new report, published in the international respiratory medicine journal Thorax (Creese et al, 2021), examined the early life environments and circumstances of thousands of UK children and their risk of continued asthma as teenagers.

Researchers from Imperial College London and the University of Liverpool used information from almost 7 500 children born in the UK between 2000 and 2002, and looked at a range of data, such as birthweight, quality of housing and local community and parental smoking habits.

They found that being born into disadvantaged circumstances increased the likelihood of developing persistent asthma by 70%, with almost two thirds (59%) of the risk attributable to early life exposures, before the children reached the age of 3 years.