| Summary: | 碩士 === 中國醫藥大學 === 公共衛生學系碩士班 === 102 === Asthma is an important issue in public health. In allergic diseases, asthma, allergic rhinitis and eczema are related with air pollution exposure in early life. In Taiwan, air pollution is very serious and the incidence of allergic diseases increases year by year. It causes huge burden of medical expenses. Therefore, how to verify the epidemiological risk factors for asthma may be especially important. The air pollution exposure will increase the amount of inflammatory substances in the human respiratory tract and increase the risk of asthma and respiratory diseases. Recent studies indicated that paracetamol drug usage will also cause respiratory tract inflammation, and induce asthma and respiratory diseases. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of air pollution exposure and paracetamol drug usage in early life (before one year old) on asthma incidence during childhood.
This study was a retrospective cohort study. Children who were born form 2000 to 2004 and exposed to air pollution and postnatal paracetamol drug usage before one year old was followed up to ages 7-11. This study collected the children’s asthma data and assessed their residence code thought primary health care outpatient visit location by Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2005 (LHID2005). We estimated air pollutant concentrations by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with air quality monitoring stations data in Taipei. At the meantime, we assessed children’s paracetamol drug usage by LHID 2005. To estimate the risk of asthma related to air pollution and paracetamol drug usage, we used Cox Proportional Hazard Regression Model and adjusted gender, antibiotic, household income, temperature and relative humidity.
In summary, our findings showed that air pollution and paracetamol drug usage were both related to children asthma in Taipei. Furthermore, the interaction of air pollution and paracetamol drug usage related to children asthma was found. Among air pollutants, PM10 and PM2.5 had the most consistent result for before and after adjusting related risk factors. In addition, the paracetamol exposure had significant interaction effects with PM10 and PM2.5. How to avoid air pollution exposure remains the key issue to reduce asthma. Until now, paracetamol drug usage is still common for children to reduce fever symptom. For children having paracetamol drug usage, they should take more attention to air pollution exposure. Wearing masks and taking public transportation can be suggested to reduce the potential damage form air pollution and the emission of air pollution from traffics, especially for infants having paracetamol drug usage.
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