Children with asthma have an easier time breathing if they spend
even a few days in the country, safeguarded from urban air pollution, a
study led by Giovanni Piedimonte, M.D., professor and chairman of the
Department of Pediatrics at the West Virginia University School of
Medicine, finds.
The study, published in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics,
shows for the first time that limiting allergic children's exposure to
outdoor air pollutants can improve lung function while reducing
inflammation of the airways.
"This finding is significant because inflammation creates health
risks for children with chronic respiratory problems," Dr. Piedimonte
explains. "Now we know that simply providing a cleaner environment in
terms of air quality helps provide relief fairly rapidly for children
with asthma."
He adds, "This study suggests that possibly we could manage
asthmatic children with much less medication if the air they breathed
was cleaner."
Researchers from the United States and Italy studied 37 Italian
children with allergies and mild but persistent asthma, transporting
them to a relatively pristine countryside setting – with lower levels
of pollution – for a week.
Children recruited for the study were patients ages 7 to 14 at an
asthma clinic in Pescara, Italy. For the rural part of the study, the
children stayed in a hotel during a school camp in Ovindoli, Italy.
They remained medicine-free and treatment-free for the duration of the
study so the researchers could make correlations between the
environmental air quality and the biomarkers that signal inflammation.
Air pollution, pollen counts and meteorological conditions were
monitored at both sites.
"A whole host of pollutants in the air of cities in economically
developed countries has contributed to a worldwide rise in asthma rates
among children," says Piedimonte, who is also physician in chief of WVU
Children's Hospital and director of the WVU Pediatric Research
Institute. "Even knowing that, I was surprised to see how much better
the children's lung functions were after just a few days of cleaner
air."