Africa Proposed as ‘Laboratory’ for Study of Prevalence of Childhood Asthma
The experience in Africa seems to support the hypothesis that the trend toward urbanization is an important factor in the increasing prevalence of childhood asthma in the developed world, according to a commentary in the February issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Early studies showed, he notes that asthma prevalence was “very low” among children who followed a traditional rural way of life, and that asthma was not uncommon in “urbanized African children.”
J Allergy Clin Immunol 2000;105:224-231.