Abstract

Background: Asthma, being a commonest chronic disease in children, is leading to disability as well as school absence. Present study was aimed to Study of clinical profile of asthma and other comorbidities among school going children. Material and Methods: Present study was prospective, observational study, conducted in school going children in urban Bangalore, age group between 6 to 15 years. On the basis of the history, students with suspected asthma were subjected to PEFR & spirometry. Results: During present study, total 8 schools were selected randomly, among 1000 subjects were enrolled into the study. Based on questionnaire 85 of subjects were suspected of asthma. 563 subjects were male and the prevalence of asthma in males is 38(6.75%) and 437 subjects were female and the prevalence of asthma in the female is 47 (10.76%). The P-Value is 0.02 statistically significant, indicating that females were more risk than males. The p-value was statistically significant for exposure to cigarette smoke at home, exposure to household smoke & pets at home; indicating that those were significant high risk factor to develop asthma. Among 1000 subjects, 85 subjects were suspected asthma, for them Pulmonary function was performed. Among 85 asthma suspected subjects, 5 (5.88%) subjects have PEFR less than 60 followed by 12 (14.11%) subjects have PEFR between 60-70, 25 (29.41%) subjects have PEFR between 70-80 and 43 (50.58%) subjects have PEFR more than 80. Conclusion: In the present study, the overall prevalence of bronchial asthma among children of the school-going age group was found to be 8.5%. The risk factors were exposure to cigarette smoke at home, exposure to household smoke, and pets at home are significantly high-risk factors to develop asthma.

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