A report reveals that asthma rates among black youth living in the urban city of Detroit and rural Georgia are basically the same, which may conflict with the theory that city life is a risk factor for the condition.
About 15 percent of Detroit’s black inner city youth have diagnosed asthma and another 8 percent undiagnosed disease, according to a study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Rates are 13.7 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively, in rural Georgia youth. Free or reduced lunch rates and percentage poverty rates, also are similar, at about 74 percent and 23 percent, respectively.
“The things these children have in common include high rates of poverty, asthma, and being black,” said Dr. Dennis R. Ownby, allergist-immunologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University and the study’s corresponding author.