A study of propensity for development of bronchial asthma in preadolescents with family history of asthma by spirometry and body mass index

Hereditary occurrence of Bronchial asthma has been long been postulated and several studies gave useful information in support of this. Therefore family history of hypersensitivity and asthma is an important factor in the prediction, diagnosis, prevention and/or treatment of Asthma. We studied the young school children (10-11 years; n=150 in groups of 50 each) without any history of Bronchial asthma and those with history of bronchial asthma and those having parents with asthma, in three separate groups. The parameters studied were Forced Vital capacity (FVC), FEV1 (Timed vital capacity), FEV1/FVC Ratio, Peak Expiratory Flow Rate measurements and Correlated with BMI. Comparison of the parameters by ANOVA revealed that there were significantly lower values in parameters between the asthmatic children than controls (p<0.001). The Body Mass Index (BMI) of asthmatic children was also found higher than normal controls. Similarly, those children with family history of Asthma also showed a trend suggesting decreased values of pulmonary function tests. But there were no significant differences in the parameters among the groups with asthma and those with family history of asthma. From the results it appears that those who are hereditarily linked to asthmatic parents show decline in the respiratory parameters apart from asthmatics. This study throws further light into the well-known belief that the children of asthma patients are more vulnerable and need extra care should be taken to reduce their exposure to the predisposing environment.