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Special
Issues |
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Childhood
Asthma: Is it a serious
disease?
With proper care and therapy asthma is a
trivial diseases. However, carelessness may
transform childhood asthma in to a serious fatal
diseases. You may tell to your parents, "I do not
Care!" . But dear kids, asthma will take care of
you whatever you do, where ever you move around
and play. It can produce a variety of abnormal changes and
responses in your body. An allergic attack may produce
symptoms, like continuous coughing, restlessness, difficult
breathing, chest tightness, and other complications. Thus,
asthma needs to be recognized by your parents and doctors.
Please do not panic if your asthmatic symptoms are not controlled.
Proper precautions and adequate therapy will
defeat your asthma.
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What should I do "Oh
God I have Asthma?"
Believe yourself as a normal
child and adopting guidelines for better living and using
minimal drug treatment, you yourself will "Defeat Asthma". If
you study more about it, spot warnings signals and get ready
for a drug therapy on sustainable basis, and maintain
cleanliness of your surrounding, asthma have to find another
host to live. Be sure and be happy with this illness which can
be over come with mere determination.
You may treat it as a
stern warning. Death from asthma is rare, but the mortality
rate of 40-45 deaths per year in children of school age in
England and Wales has not diminished significantly over the
last few years. In India death from asthma often appears to
occur without warning, and is not uncommon in teenagers with
chronic severe asthma. Before the disease gets worsen, check
it out now.
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How
Asthma starts in Childhood?
Generally tall parents have tall offspring
and dark skinned parents have dark skinned offspring. Not
only the outer resemblance is necessary but sometimes the
nature of offspring is also similar to his parents. Why is it
so? It is easily understood & explained that
characteristics of the parents are transferred to children
through genes. Some diseases are also passed on to the next
generation most probably through genes. Similarly allergic
diseases like asthma could be hereditary disease. Genetic
linkage is responsible for common occurrence of asthma in
persons of a same family. Though exact mode of transformation
of genes expression is not worked out but it has been found
that to some extent, the risk of developing asthma is because
of the hereditary reason. Like your hidden naughty habits,
tendency of developing asthma live secretly in your body. As
you grow, asthma may grow but check out whether your Mom or
Dad had it? Or their parents suffered from it? It could be
hereditary.
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What are the chances of Asthma
in Children if a parent has Asthma?
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of having asthma in a child are maximum when both the parents
suffer from asthma and minimun when none of the parents had
asthma. Approximately, risk is as follows: |
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Asthmatic
parents |
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None |
Father |
Mother |
Both |
Chances of developing
Asthma in children
(+Traces ++
Low +++ High ++++Very high) |
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How
the tendency of Allergy is detected in a Child?
Research has shown that
tendency to develop asthma and other allergic disease is
present in the body since birth and it can be detected by
estimation of protein called immunoglobulin
E (IgE) levels in
cord blood. However, the tendency of developing allergy or
asthma remains silent or in dormant state during early years
of life and the child does not have any problem . The tendency
of developing allergic disease is called atopy and
therefore allergic diseases are also called atopic
diseases.
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What starts
Asthma in a Child?
When an atopic child comes
in contact with special type of environmental factors called
environmental triggers, dormant tendency of asthma wakes up
and child starts suffering from asthma disease. It has been
observed that exposure to tobacco smoke, old settled dust or
lung infection by a type of virus called respiratory syncytial
virus (RSV) during infancy can lead to development of asthma
in sensitive individuals.
Paradoxically, half of atopic children never
develop asthma during their lifetime because they were never
exposed to the high quantity of environmental inducers
required to wake up dormant tendency of asthma. It explains
the reason of not finding ancestral history of atopic disease
in many patients with asthma. Such ancestors had tendency of
atopic disease but remained in dormant form
only.
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Chances of cure of
Childhood Asthma?
Seven percent of school children
in India are suffering from asthma, half of them get a
complete cure while in remaining asthma continues till adult
life. Tendency of developing asthma is based on genetic
predisposition (atopy) of the individual. However, atopic
individuals are perfectly healthy and do not suffer from the disease till they come in contact with a strong environmental
trigger factor. We can not change the genetic tendency of
an atopic individual but certainly manipulate environmental
trigger factors. By adequate control of an environmental
trigger factors and use of asthmatic style, we can prevent
onset of asthma in potential asthmatic children (children of
asthmatic parents), and in asthmatic children probably stop
continuation of asthma in their adult life.
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