Study: Less Education, More Asthma Symptoms

Reported December 30, 2009

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Individuals with more education suffer less from asthma, and having fewer than 12 years of formal schooling is associated with worse asthma symptoms.

Drs. Kim Lavoie and Simon Bacon from the Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Canada, and colleagues studied asthma severity in a group of 871 adult patients. They were quoted as saying, "Lower educational achievement was associated with worse asthma control, greater emergency health service use, and worse asthma self-efficacy. Patients with less than 12 years of education were 55 percent more likely to report an asthma-related emergency health service visit in the last year."

The researchers suggest that lower education is often a marker of lower socioeconomic status generally, and that this may explain their results. At the individual level, poorer people may have higher exposures to indoor allergens such as cockroaches, tobacco smoke and mold, and to outdoor urban pollution.

“Although this link between socioeconomic status and asthma is well established in children,” said Lavoie, “this is the first study to investigate it in an adult population in Canada. It is noteworthy that patients with less education were more likely to exhibit poor health behaviors that may exacerbate asthma, including smoking and being overweight."

SOURCE: Respiratory Research, December 16, 2009