It is well known that tobacco takes lives, even if the smoke is inhaled by what others smoke. For this reason, it is vital to protect the most vulnerable passive smokers of all from tobacco smoke: children.
Now, a recent study shows that Children who are exposed to tobacco smoke are twice as likely to relapse with an asthmatic crisis in a twelve month period after an asthma hospitalization.
The researchers suggest that it might be interesting to test the exposure to tobacco in children, with the intention of protecting them and identifying those caregivers who continue to smoke in front of them at home or in the car, to inform them of the risk to which they are exposed and maybe to offer them help to quit smoking.
Exposure to tobacco could be measured by taking blood and / or saliva samples and use those results to objectively predict the chances that the child has of being treated again for an asthmatic crisis if he does not stop his exposure to tobacco smoke.
With this information specific interventions could be designed not only for the child but also for their parents or caregivers, to try to prevent the child from relapsing again from his illness.
And it is that the results of the study, conducted with more than 600 children from 1 to 16 years of age, who were tested for blood and saliva and who were followed for a year after being admitted to a hospital for asthma treatment they're clear: those children who were exposed to smoke were more than twice as likely to return to the hospital for asthma treatment than children without exposure to tobacco.
