Agencies

Karachi, March 19:

Fresh and dry fruits are out for many Pakistani children and have been replaced by cookies, colas and candies. This is worrying pediatricians who say diets rich in junk food could be the culprits behind the rapid rise in asthma and allergies in children. “The Pakistani child seems to be going through a palate change with desire for food that is fast and processed. This is a cause of concern,” said Dr Naseeruddin Mahmood, a pediatrician that coordinated a huge international study known as the ISAAC (International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Children). The project was carried out in 150 countries where so far 50,000 children have been studied.

In Karachi alone, 6,000 children from the six to 14 age brackets, in posh residences and slums, were tested for asthma and allergies. The testing that began in 1998 yielded some “very perturbing findings”, said Mahmood. “In 1996 about 2,000 children were studied between the ages of 13 and 14. The prevalence of asthma was about nine per cent and allergic rhinitis was about 22 per cent,’’ he said. Mahmood said the same age group was studied again in 2001, this time with 3,000 children from the same schools in collaboration with Care and Cure, a non-governmental organisation working on school health. The results this time around alarmed Mahmood.

According to the pediatrician the prevalence of asthma was 19 per cent and allergic rhinitis was more than 30 per cent. The results of the first study in 1996 were published in ‘The Lancet’, a prestigious British medical journal. The results of the latest study are in the process of being collated. “We need to evaluate the causes as it is taking a toll on our young population. Hospitalisation, cost of medicine, time out from work by parents, the cost burden of disease — these are dimensions that remain unmeasured,” said Mahmood. Highlighting the relationship between diet and asthma, Mahmood pointed out that children these days eat less fruit and vegetables and instead rely on fast food.

This, he said, is thought to be one of the reasons behind the increase in asthma cases worldwide. In Saudi Arabia recently a comparison of some 100 children with asthma symptoms and about 200 non-asthmatic children showed that those who had the lowest intakes of vegetables, milk, vitamin E and minerals were more likely to suffer from the disease, researchers said. Children whose diets were low in vegetables and vitamin E were two to three times more likely to develop asthmatic symptoms than other children irrespective of other factors such as family size, affluence and parental smoking, they added.