Posted on July 13, 2001 at 10:30 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — A study of 552 inner city preschool children in the southern United States shows a high prevalence of asthma. But many of those children have not been diagnosed with asthma or received appropriate medical care for the condition. The findings were presented by researchers from UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) at the World Asthma Meeting in Chicago on Friday, July 13, 2001.

Roni Grad, MD, associate professor of pediatrics, and Anne Turner-Henson, DSN, associate professor of nursing, along with Nalini Sathiakumar, MD, associate professor of public health, and Connie Kohler, Ph.D., assistant professor of public health, surveyed parental care givers of inner city Head Start students in Birmingham to determine the prevalence of asthma and symptoms in this population.

The UAB team studied 552 children, 19.5 percent of whom had been previously diagnosed with asthma by a physician. Thirty-five percent of children demonstrating symptoms consistent with asthma, such as wheezing, did not have a diagnosis of asthma.

“There is a high prevalence of asthma in this population,” Grad says, “and a large number of symptomatic children who have not yet been diagnosed with the disease.”

Grad reported that further analysis failed to identify typical asthma risk factors such as race, smoke exposure, care giver education level or first-born status as risk factors for asthma diagnosis or current wheeze in this population.

“Our finding suggest that risk factors in this population may differ from risk factors in other populations. Further studies are needed in the Southern states to assess the differences.”