Risk factors for asthma among schoolchildren who participated in a case-control study in urban Uganda
- Medical Research Council/Uganda Virus Research Institute and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Uganda Research Unit, Uganda
- London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom
Abstract
Data on asthma aetiology in Africa are scarce. We investigated the risk factors for asthma among schoolchildren (5-17years) in urban Uganda. We conducted a case-control study, among 555 cases and 1,115 controls. Asthma was diagnosed by study clinicians. The main risk factors for asthma were tertiary education for fathers [adjusted OR (95% CI); 2.32 (1.71-3.16)] and mothers [1.85 (1.38-2.48)]; area of residence at birth, with children born in a small town or in the city having an increased asthma risk compared to schoolchildren born in rural areas [2.16 (1.60-2.92)] and [2.79 (1.79-4.35)], respectively; father's and mother's history of asthma; children's own allergic conditions; atopy; and cooking on gas/electricity. In conclusion, asthma was associated with a strong rural-town-city risk gradient, higher parental socio-economic status and urbanicity. This work provides the basis for future studies to identify specific environmental/lifestyle factors responsible for increasing asthma risk among children in urban areas in LMICs.
Data availability
Data is available at https://datacompass.lshtm.ac.uk/1369/
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SONA project - Asthma risk factors dataLondon School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) Data Compass, https://doi.org/10.17037/DATA.00001369.
Article and author information
Author details
Gyaviira Nkurunungi
Funding
Wellcome (Training fellowship 102512)
- Harriet Mpairwe
Wellcome (Senior fellowship 095778)
- Alison M Elliott
European research council (Project grant 668954)
- Neil Pearce
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Belinda Nicolau, McGill University, Canada
Ethics
Human subjects: Parents or guardians of the children provided written informed consent, and children eight years or older provided written informed assent. This consent was to participate in the study, and to publish anonymous results.The study was approved by the Uganda Virus Research Institute Research and Ethics Committee, and the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology [reference number HS 1707]. The two bodies follow Good Clinical Practice guidelines.
Version history
- Received: June 19, 2019
- Accepted: November 13, 2019
- Accepted Manuscript published: November 15, 2019 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: December 16, 2019 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2019, Mpairwe et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Risk factors for asthma among schoolchildren who participated in a case-control study in urban Uganda
eLife 8:e49496.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.49496
Further reading
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- Epidemiology and Global Health
Background:
Circulating omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have been associated with various chronic diseases and mortality, but results are conflicting. Few studies examined the role of omega-6/omega-3 ratio in mortality.
Methods:
We investigated plasma omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs and their ratio in relation to all-cause and cause-specific mortality in a large prospective cohort, the UK Biobank. Of 85,425 participants who had complete information on circulating PUFAs, 6461 died during follow-up, including 2794 from cancer and 1668 from cardiovascular disease (CVD). Associations were estimated by multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression with adjustment for relevant risk factors.
Results:
Risk for all three mortality outcomes increased as the ratio of omega-6/omega-3 PUFAs increased (all Ptrend <0.05). Comparing the highest to the lowest quintiles, individuals had 26% (95% CI, 15–38%) higher total mortality, 14% (95% CI, 0–31%) higher cancer mortality, and 31% (95% CI, 10–55%) higher CVD mortality. Moreover, omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs in plasma were all inversely associated with all-cause, cancer, and CVD mortality, with omega-3 showing stronger effects.
Conclusions:
Using a population-based cohort in UK Biobank, our study revealed a strong association between the ratio of circulating omega-6/omega-3 PUFAs and the risk of all-cause, cancer, and CVD mortality.
Funding:
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institute of Health under the award number R35GM143060 (KY). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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- Ecology
- Epidemiology and Global Health
Non-pharmaceutical interventions implemented to block SARS-CoV-2 transmission in early 2020 led to global reductions in the incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). By contrast, most European countries reported an increase in antibiotic resistance among invasive Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates from 2019 to 2020, while an increasing number of studies reported stable pneumococcal carriage prevalence over the same period. To disentangle the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on pneumococcal epidemiology in the community setting, we propose a mathematical model formalizing simultaneous transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and antibiotic-sensitive and -resistant strains of S. pneumoniae. To test hypotheses underlying these trends five mechanisms were built into the model and examined: (1) a population-wide reduction of antibiotic prescriptions in the community, (2) lockdown effect on pneumococcal transmission, (3) a reduced risk of developing an IPD due to the absence of common respiratory viruses, (4) community azithromycin use in COVID-19 infected individuals, (5) and a longer carriage duration of antibiotic-resistant pneumococcal strains. Among 31 possible pandemic scenarios involving mechanisms individually or in combination, model simulations surprisingly identified only two scenarios that reproduced the reported trends in the general population. They included factors (1), (3), and (4). These scenarios replicated a nearly 50% reduction in annual IPD, and an increase in antibiotic resistance from 20% to 22%, all while maintaining a relatively stable pneumococcal carriage. Exploring further, higher SARS-CoV-2 R0 values and synergistic within-host virus-bacteria interaction mechanisms could have additionally contributed to the observed antibiotic resistance increase. Our work demonstrates the utility of the mathematical modeling approach in unraveling the complex effects of the COVID-19 pandemic responses on AMR dynamics.
