AAAAI: asthma more likely to prove fatal in black children

(HealthDay)—Black American children are six times more likely to die from asthma than their white or Hispanic peers, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, held from March 3 to 6 in Atlanta.

In the new study, a team led by Anna Chen Arroyo, M.D., M.P.H., from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and colleagues tracked data regarding the asthma deaths of 2,571 children nationwide between 2003 and 2014.

The researchers found that just over 50 percent of all the deaths among children with asthma occurred in emergency departments or clinics rather than at home (14 percent) or in a hospital (30 percent). And in all these locations, black children were more likely to die than any other group of children.

"The variation in the location of pediatric asthma deaths by race or ethnicity may imply a differential access to care," Arroyo said in a news release from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. "Studying these variations provides important insight and understanding these differences may guide future interventions more effectively."