Smoking in young people with asthma

Modern guidelines for the management of asthma state that asthmatic patients should be strongly advised not to smoke. However, it remains unclear to what extend young people with asthma actually behave like this. This study compares the prevalence of daily smoking between 15-year adolescents with diagnosed asthma and without asthma, and evaluates to what extent risk factors for smoking play a comparable role in the smoking behaviour of these two groups.

The study is part of the 2001-2002 international HBSC study. Besides questions about health behaviour, individual and social resources, a set of asthma questions were included in six countries.

Adolescents with diagnosed asthma are more likely to be daily smokers than non-asthmatic adolescents. In asthmatic and non-asthmatic adolescents, similar associations with risk factors are found for daily smoking (drunkenness, cannabis use, low life satisfaction, spending evenings with friends, having smoking parents and peers). Diagnosed asthmatics are more prone to score high on these factors than non-asthmatics.

Smoking in adolescents with asthma is a public health problem. Smoking prevention efforts directed towards young people should pay attention to young people with asthma and the curative sector should increase their efforts to motivate asthmatic adolescents not to smoke.