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Who’s Lying Now?

Who’s Lying Now?. From CTV Wed. Nov. 17, 2010. OTTAWA — Asthma cases have dropped among two- to seven-year-olds to their lowest level in more than a decade, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday.

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Who’s Lying Now?

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  1. Who’s Lying Now?

  2. From CTVWed. Nov. 17, 2010 OTTAWA — Asthma cases have dropped among two- to seven-year-olds to their lowest level in more than a decade, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday. One factor that may have contributed to the decline is the hand-in-hand drop in smoking rates across the country, along with changes in diagnosis patterns, experts say. The percentage of kids with asthma rose from 11 per cent to 13 per cent from 1994 to 2001, but by last year, the figure had fallen to 10 per cent. Since the turn of the century, the percentage of kids with asthma has fallen in the Atlantic provinces, Ontario and Quebec, but remained fairly stable in the Prairie provinces and British Columbia, the study showed.Dr. Allan Becker, a pediatric allergist, said the overall findings don't surprise him. "There are two things that I think are probably going on. One is that we may actually be seeing a real plateau in asthma prevalence, and that's entirely possible," he said from Winnipeg, where he is head of the section of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in the department of pediatrics and child health at the University of Manitoba.

  3. Cont. "And secondly that there is that diagnostic perception now that not all that wheezes is asthma. That's an aphorism that we've heard from our professors many, many, many years ago, mostly speaking about adults. But now that's equally true in terms of children." The study found that a significantly higher percentage of boys than girls had been diagnosed with asthma over the 14-year period. The upturn in asthma prevalence to 2000 and the decline that followed was seen in all age groups. Becker said "there's no question" that a decline in smoking rates helps. "Children of parents who smoke have a much higher frequency of colds, of respiratory infections, and among those children, the viral illnesses are the major causes of these wheezing illnesses," he said. "And that would suggest, then, a diagnosis of asthma. So with fewer -- especially young parents -- smoking, it really does make a difference in the likelihood that these children will have wheezy episodes with their colds.“

  4. Smoking trends in the United States (per capita), 1900 - 1998. Source: US Department of Agriculture

  5. Same chart as last slide with overlay chart showing asthma trends (lower right hand corner). Overlap begins in 1971. Asthma chart from Public Health Agency of Canada. “Asthma Hospitalizations, ages 0-19, Canada, 1971-1995.” (Solid line ages 0-4, dashed line ages 5-19.)

  6. "Asthma in California," California Department of Health Services. Points of Interest No. 9, May 2003. http//www.ehib.org/oma/papers/brfss_poi_asthma.pdf. California Air Resources Board. 2003 Air Pollution Data CD: available at http:www.arb.ca.gov/aqd/aqdcd/aqdcd.htm

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