[Prevalence and severity of asthma in 6 and 7 year-old children from Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico].

Background: Asthma is in constant increase worldwide. Therefore it is important to perform epidemiological studies that reveal a diagnosis of the problem in different regions of the world.

Objective: To determine the prevalence and severity of asthma in school children of Torreón Coahuila, Mexico.

Material And Method: A comparative transversal study was carried out to determine the prevalence and severity of asthma in six and seven-year-old children. Subjects were selected randomly from the general population following a two-stage selection. In the first stage, primary schools (private and public) were chosen; and, in the second, subjects from these schools were selected at random. The subjects had to fulfill the inclusion criteria: six or seven years of age, both genders, without congenital diseases. A standardized survey used by the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) was applied to the selected children. The information was analyzed using descriptive statistics in the Stata 8.0 program, to obtain the prevalence and CI 95% of each variable in every gender, as well as in the total studied population.

Results: We studied 2,826 children, 51% females. The response rate was 94.2%. The prevalence of actual asthma was 9.9% (CI 95% 8.81-11.0), 25.7% had accumulated asthma (CI 95% 24.0-27.3), and 5.6% had diagnosed asthma (CI 95% 4.74-6.43). No relevant gender differences were observed in any of the variables.

Conclusions: Actual asthma prevalence is higher in Torreón, Coahuila, than in Cuernavaca and Ciudad Juárez. No significant gender differences were observed.