Effect of passive smoking and the use of harm reduction strategies by parents on the health of their asthmatic and non-asthmatic children

Abstract EN

Objective: This study was design to assess the effort taken by parents of both asthmatic and non asthmatic children to reduce the adverse effects of smoking at home through the use of harm reduction strategies.

Methods: A case-control study was conducted covering 2 hospitals in Mosil city.

A total of 304 children (age 6-11.99 years) were included (110 asthmatic children, and 194 controls).

Data was collected from the parents, and lung function tests were done to all the children in the sample.

Results: Eighty percent of parents of cases did certain measures to protect their children from environmental tobacco smoke compared to 93.3% of parents in control group with significant difference between them, the number of measures used by parents in both groups significantly differ, but when the number of measures used by parents in both groups were compared with results of lung function tests of children there were no significant differences between them.

Conclusions: Majority of parents agreed that tobacco smoke harm a great deal or quite a lot; yet, only 1% of parents in the control group and non of parents in the asthmatic children group agreed to stop smoking at home as a measure to reduce the adverse effects of tobacco smoke.

Lung function tests of the included children show no significant difference when studied with the numbers of harm reduction measures used by their parents.