Climate Change and Childhood Asthma: A Scoping Review

Warming temperatures are associated with increasing incidence and severity of wildfires, extreme rainfall, and large storms.

To provide an updated review of research into the impacts of climate-driven environmental factors on childhood asthma, and to frame future research needs, we carried out a scoping review focused on studies reported over the past 5 years in PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Global Health.

Data appear to be especially strong for an association of exposure to wildfire smoke (WFS) with adverse asthma outcomes, including in children. Additional evidence links severe weather events, temperature extremes, and extended pollen seasons with worse asthma outcomes. Experimental studies have established several specific pathways that could link these environmental factors with disease and could suggest potential preventive or treatment strategies.

Future research needs to include a better understanding of key triggers and mechanistic pathways, and on mitigation strategies that could be applied immediately. Given the complex and multifactorial nature of how environmental exposures contribute to asthma, computational approaches will probably be critical to define causality in complex exposure mixtures, improve environmental exposure forecasting, and inform personalized asthma management.