( Asthma a common chronic lung disease ...)Teen-age Smokers at Higher Risk Of Developing Asthma,Health

Asthma, a common chronic lung disease, is perhaps the most common respiratory disease after the common cold. According to researchers //at the University of Southern California, teen-agers who smoke, have nearly four times the risk of being affected by asthma as compared to those who did not smoke. Similarly, children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy were also at a higher risk.

Lead researcher Frank Gilliland, M.D., Ph.D., professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, also found that children exposed to cigarette smoke in their mothers' wombs have even higher risks of developing asthma. These results have been published in theAmerican Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

'We've been studying this group of children long enough that now some of them have started smoking,' Gilliland says.'

He also states that ifthose same teenagers were also exposed to tobacco smoke before they were born, 'they get more than a double whammy - nine times the risk of getting asthma!'

While cigarette smoke is known to have negative effects on lungs, evidence linking smoking and the development of asthma has been mixed. Some of that difficulty lies in trying to separate out confounding variables in adult smokers over their lifetimes, Gilliland and his co-researchers say. By studying adolescents, who had a shorter history of smoking, the researchers were able to make a clearer connection.

These findings suggest that the harmful effects of cigarette smoking are not limited to those who are long-term heavy smokers,' says National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Director David A. Schwartz, M.D. 'The study results provide clear evidence of a link between short-term smoking and respiratory illness in adolescents and young adults.'

The nature of this extensive study deserves a mention here. The study drew upon data from the Children's Health Study (CHS), a longi
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