Monday, February 18, 2019

Good Sleep Hygiene in Adolescents With Asthma Linked to Improved Attention


A real world comparison of this study seems to fit what we know.  Child and adolescent sleep patterns are woefully bad.  It's no surprise then that attentiveness and other quality of life factors can improve immensely when we "clean up" our sleep habits. Dr. Susarla
Adolescents with asthma who practice good sleep hygiene may experience improvements in sleep and attention span, better quality of life in school, and lower rates of dysfunction during the daytime, according to a study published in the Journal of Asthma
This study included 41 participants with persistent asthma (mean age, 14.83±1.28 years; 51.2% male adolescents). Measures included demographic information (sex, age, race/ethnicity, education, caregiver marital status, and family income), information on asthma, sleep hygiene via the adolescent sleep hygiene scale (ASHS), quality of sleep via the Adolescent Sleep Wake Scale (ASWS), quality of life via the Pediatric Quality of Life Index (PedsQL), and attention span via the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT).
To investigate associations among variables related to asthma, as well as between demographic features and dependent variables, Pearson product-moment correlations were used. The predictive power of sleep hygiene on sleep quality, quality of life (school-related or otherwise), and attention span was calculated using linear regressions. Because the sample size was smaller than the recommended 73 participants, effect sizes were used to interpret results. Cohen's f² effect sizes were categorized as large (0.35), medium (0.15), or small (0.02).

Friday, February 1, 2019

Can We Predict Childhood Asthma Earlier?


Predicting and appropriately diagnosing early childhood asthma is still a challenge, particularly with some "conventional wisdom" that diagnosing under 5 is too early. Can we arrive at a set of criteria where treatment is indicated? Health care providers needs tools to help direct us when early intervention is needed.  Predictive scores like the Pediatric Asthma Risk Score may bring us closer to the mark. Dr. Susarla

A new quantitative personalized tool to predict asthma development in young children predicted asthma development reliably according to results of a study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Data from the Cincinnati Childhood Allergy and Air Pollution Study, a birth cohort of infants born to atopic parents between 2001 and 2003 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Northern Kentucky was used to develop a quantitative personalized tool called The Pediatric Asthma Risk Score to predict asthma development in young children. The sensitivity and specificity of the Pediatric Asthma Risk Score were compared with those of the Asthma Predictive Index in the Isle of Wight study, which was a United Kingdom whole population birth cohort study.
Read article here.