2023-04-03 ラトガース大学
研究では、米国の大規模な保険請求データベースを用いて、前3年と比較して2020年の新規喘息診断率を調査した。その結果、前年比で喘息診断率が52%低下したことが明らかになった。
研究者らは、この減少の一因として、マスク着用や社交的距離の確保によって、風邪やインフルエンザの感染率が低下したことが影響している可能性があると指摘している。
<関連情報>
- https://www.rutgers.edu/news/childhood-asthma-declines-during-covid-19-pandemic
- https://respiratory-research.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12931-023-02377-7
米国でのCOVID-19パンデミック時に小児喘息診断が減少したこと Childhood asthma diagnoses declined during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
Daniel B. Horton,Amanda L. Neikirk,Yiling Yang,Cecilia Huang,Reynold A. Panettieri Jr,Stephen Crystal,Brian L. Strom & Lauren E. Parlett
Respiratory Research Published:10 March 2023
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1186/s12931-023-02377-7
Abstract
Background
Prior studies have documented declines in pediatric asthma exacerbations and asthma-related health care utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic, but less is known about the incidence of asthma during the pandemic.
Methods
We conducted a retrospective cohort study of children under age 18 without a prior diagnosis of asthma within a large US commercial claims database. Incident asthma was defined using a combination of diagnosis codes, location of services, and medication dispensing. Crude quarterly rates of asthma diagnosis per 1000 children were calculated, and the incidence rate ratio and 95% confidence interval were estimated for newly diagnosed asthma during versus before the pandemic using negative binomial regression, adjusted for age, sex, region, and season.
Results
Compared with 3 years prior to the pandemic, crude incident diagnosis rates of asthma decreased by 52% across the first four quarters of the US pandemic. The covariate-adjusted pandemic-associated incidence rate ratio was 0.47 (95% confidence interval 0.43, 0.51).
Conclusions
New diagnoses of childhood asthma in the US declined by half during the first year of the pandemic. These findings raise important questions whether pandemic-related changes in infectious or other triggers truly altered the incidence of childhood asthma beyond the well-described disruptions in healthcare access.
