Rural lifestyle may have protective role in Pediatric asthma, finds Study

CHINA: The prevalence of asthma and atopic disorders was significantly lower in rural children when compared with their urban peers, a study published in The Allergy. Exposure to poultry and agricultural farming in rural areas was found to be the most important factor associated with asthma protection during the study.

These study findings may lead to primary preventive strategies for asthma, Yuhan Xing, the department of paediatrics, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong and colleagues wrote.

Over the past few decades prevalence of Asthma, one of the most common chronic diseases in childhood has been increasing. One of the most consistent epidemiological findings is that children living in a farming or rural environment are protected from the development of asthma and allergies, but the protective factors are not clear.

A community-based, cross-sectional epidemiological study was performed on a total of 17,587 children aged 5–8 years, 3435 from Hong Kong (urban) and 14,152 from Conghua (rural county in southern China). Asthma and allergic symptoms, as well as environmental exposures, were ascertained by using a standardized and validated questionnaire completed by their parents.

The study result showed that

• The prevalence of current wheeze was significantly lower in rural Conghua than that in urban Hong Kong (1.7% vs. 7.7%, p < 0.001).

• A lower rate of asthma ever was also reported in rural children compared with their urban counterparts (2.5% vs. 5.3%, p < 0.001)

• After adjusting  confounding factors, exposure to agricultural farming (adjusted odds ratio 0.74, 95% confidence interval: 0.56–0.97) and poultry (0.75, 0.59–0.96) were found to be the most important factors associated with the asthma-protective effect in the rural area

• Further propensity score-adjusted analysis indicated that the asthma protection conferred by living in the rural environment was mainly attributable to poultry exposure.

From the study results, researchers concluded," Children from the rural Conghua region of China had lower rates of asthma and atopic disorders than children from urban Hong Kong, indicating a protective effect from an agricultural lifestyle."

The researchers, then, called for further studies to determine the biological mechanisms behind the protection that poultry exposure seems to confer to develop preventive strategies against asthma.

Yuhan Xing,Maggie H. Wang,Ting-Fan Leung,Chun-Kwok Wong,Marjut Roponen,Bianca Schaub,Jing Li,Gary W. K. Wong

First published: 09 May 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/all.15365