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

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