Asthma and lower airway diseaseAbuse during childhood and adolescence and risk of adult-onset asthma in African American women
Section snippets
Study population
The BWHS is a prospective cohort study established in 1995, when 59,000 African American women aged 21 through 69 years were recruited mainly from subscribers to Essence magazine, a general readership magazine targeted to black women.15 The baseline questionnaire elicited information on demographic and lifestyle factors, reproductive history, and medical conditions. The cohort is followed biennially by using mailed and Web-based health questionnaires. Follow-up has averaged more than 80% of the
Results
During 16 years of follow-up comprising 417,931 person-years, 1,160 women reported incident adult-onset asthma together with asthma medication use. The mean age at diagnosis was 47 years (SD, 11 years; range, 23-82 years).
Compared with women who were not abused during childhood or adolescence, abused women were younger, more likely to be current drinkers, more likely to have been exposed to secondhand smoke, and more likely to have reported more pack years of smoking, a higher prevalence of
Discussion
In this large cohort of African American women, exposure to physical abuse during childhood was associated with an increased incidence of adult-onset asthma of greater than 20%. The risk was higher among women who also felt in danger in the home as a child. IRRs were weaker for sexual abuse during childhood, and there was little evidence that abuse during adolescence increased asthma incidence. The adverse effect of childhood physical abuse was confined to older women.
Two previous studies have
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2021, Clinics in Chest MedicineCitation Excerpt :Chronic maternal interpersonal trauma is associated with worsened asthma control during pregnancy, as well as the development of asthma in children of affected mothers.63 Experiencing abuse during childhood has been linked to adult asthma in a study of African American Women in the United States.64 In US women with asthma, those who experienced sexual violence were 2 times more likely to report an acute exacerbation of asthma compared with women who did not experience this violence.65
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Supported by a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (HL107314).
Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: All authors received grants from the National Institutes of Health/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.