Secondhand smoke impairs vital cough reflex in kids


The findings by the Monell Centre in Philadelphia, United States, may help to explain why children of smokers are more likely to develop pneumonia, bronchitis and other diseases and also are more likely to experiment with smoking during adolescence.
“Cough protects our lungs from potentially damaging environmental threats, such as chemicals and dust. Living with a parent who smokes weakens this reflex, one of the most vital of the human body,” said Julie Mennella from Monell who co-directed the study with sensory scientist Paul Wise.
Children are exposed to more secondhand smoke than non-smoking adults, with 60 percent of US children aged three to 11 years and 18-million youth aged between 12 and 19 exposed to tobacco smoke on a regular basis.
Adult smokers are known to have a less sensitive cough reflex relative to non-smokers, meaning that it takes more irritation to elicit a cough in the smokers. The researchers wanted to find out if the cough reflex of children and adolescents who are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke is affected similarly.
In the study, published in the journal Tobacco and Nicotine Research, 38 healthy children aged 10 to 17 years old inhaled increasing concentrations of capsaicin from a nebulizer. Capsaicin is the burning ingredient in chili peppers and a potent chemical stimulus for cough. Seventeen of the youth were regularly exposed to smoke in the home, while 21 were never exposed to smoke at home.
The capsaicin concentration that induced two coughs was labelled as the individual’s cough threshold.
Youth regularly exposed to secondhand smoke required twice as much capsaicin to trigger cough as did non-exposed children, meaning that the exposed children were less sensitive to the irritating environmental stimulus.
The findings highlight a previously unrecognised public health risk from exposure to secondhand smoke. An insensitive cough reflex could make exposed children less able to cope with environmental threats, which could in turn play a role in their increased risk for developing respiratory illness.
“This study suggests that even if an exposed child is not coughing, his or her respiratory health may still be affected by secondhand smoke,” said Wise.
It is also possible that an insensitive cough reflex could increase the risk of adolescents acquiring a smoking habit by making experimentation with smoking less unpleasant.
Source: EurekAlert!
Author
-
Health-e News is South Africa's dedicated health news service and home to OurHealth citizen journalism. Follow us on Twitter @HealtheNews
View all posts
Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Secondhand smoke impairs vital cough reflex in kids
by Health-e News, Health-e News
August 22, 2012
MOST READ
Lack of ambulance forces woman to give birth near hospital gate
US aid Freeze: Call for urgent plan and increased budget for health
US funding freeze disrupts HIV, TB, and GBV support services
Kindness costs: The hidden sacrifices nurses make for patients with TB
EDITOR'S PICKS
Related

Stories From The Ground: Teen mum juggling school and a baby set to write matric finals

Stories from the ground: A mother’s journey towards beating breast cancer

Stories from the ground: EC nurse fears for her life as clinics come under siege from criminals

Stories From The Ground: Teen mum juggling school and a baby set to write matric finals

Stories from the ground: A mother’s journey towards beating breast cancer
