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.
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.
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
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