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Hope for children with asthma

For the 15 percent of Canadian kids with asthma, that's not so easy. But there's new hope for controlling this chronic disease

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Originally published in Today's Parent September 2010

It’s a terrifying feeling when your child can’t breathe. That’s something Colleen Charland-Wright knows all about. The North Gower, Ont., mom has worried about her six-year-old’s lungs ever since he was born with breathing difficulties.

Ryan was diagnosed with asthma while still a baby, and his mom got used to rushing him to emergency every time he struggled for air. “When we went on holidays, I would plan all our trips based on how close we were to the hospital,” says Charland-Wright. “There’s stress living with that, not knowing if he’s going to have an asthma attack or not.”

Asthma, a chronic lung disease, affects about 15 percent of kids and 10 percent of adults. Their bronchial tubes overreact to allergens and other triggers that lead to inflamed airways when they’re breathed in. This inflammation can cause wheezing, coughing and breathing problems, and it’s made worse by triggers like cigarette smoke, cold air and viral infections of the respiratory tract. Asthma can be deadly serious; about 20 kids in Canada lose their lives each year from asthma attacks, when their airflow is restricted by mucus and spasms in the bronchial tubes.

The rate of asthma has spiked aggressively in the last few decades, perhaps four times what it was in the ’70s, before levelling off at the current rate. No one knows exactly why. Could it be explained by an increase in air pollution? “Maybe those kinds of stresses are what train the immune system to behave differently. But we don’t yet have definitive proof,” says Mark Greenwald, a Toronto allergy and asthma specialist, and chair of the Asthma Society of Canada’s medical and scientific advisory committee.

Despite that baffling question, there’s a lot we do know about control and prevention of asthma, and we’re learning more all the time. But it’s not all information you’ll hear from your family doctor. Read on for four key things that parents of kids with asthma should know.

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