Posted on 06/22/2005 8:33:21 AM PDT by Born Conservative
WASHINGTON, June 20--Children with recurrent otitis media have a higher number of infectious pathogens in their nasopharynx and lower counts of beneficial flora.
A Georgetown team, discovered this while seeking to show how smoking by parents affected children with otitis media.
Surprisingly, the number of infectious pathogens found in the children of smoking parents and the children of non-smoking was essentially the same, Itzhak Brook, M.D., and Alan E. Gober, M.D., reported in the June issue of Archives of Otolaryngology.
They collected swabs from 40 children with recurrent otitis media and also from their parents, half of whom smoked at least 10 cigarettes a day for the past five years.
Seventeen infectious pathogens were recovered from 15 otitis-media prone children (0.85 per child) who came from smoking households compared with 16 pathogens recovered from the noses of 14 children from non-smoking homes (0.8 per child).
The beneficial bacteria counts were identical between the two groups of children. The investigators found 55 instances of beneficial bacteria that could interfere with harmful organisms in both the children from non-smoking homes and those whose parents smoked.
The differences between the two groups of parents were more striking. The researchers recovered from 12 smoking parents a total of 14 infectious pathogens (0.7 per parent), compared with only three potentially harmful pathogens recovered from three non-smoking parents (0.15 per parent; P<.001 compared with the parents and children in the smoking group and children in the non-smoking group).
Non-smoking parents had better counts of beneficial flora, too. They had 129 instances of bacterial interference against harmful pathogens compared with 58 instances among the smokers (P<.05).
Among the smoking households, there were 11 instances in which investigators found the same bacteria in both the parents who smoked and their children. However, they only found two such instances among the non-smoking parents and their children. The bacteria found in these instances included Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae (non-type b), Moraxella catarrhalis, and Streptococcus pyogenes.
"A cycle can therefore exist in families of otitis-media prone children whose parents smoke such that potential microbial pathogens circulate between the parents and children," Drs. Brook and Gober wrote. "Support for this explanation will come if future studies of smoking parents of non-otitis media prone children show the presence of similar patterns of colonization in them as we observed in smoking parents of otitis-media prone children."
Being otitis-media prone was defined as having at least six episodes of acute suppurative otitis media in the previous two years. The children were ages 20 months to 66 months and 26 of the 40 youngsters were boys. None of the children had used antibiotics in the month preceding the study. The parents' ages ranged from 25 to 44 and none had any chronic illness or respiratory infections at the time of enrollment. None of the parents had taken antibiotics three months prior to the start of the study.
Despite the findings, the authors still believe that smoking increases the risk of recurrent otitis media in children.
"It is possible," the researchers wrote, "that the exposure to secondhand smoke also contributes to the better adherence of pathogens to the nasopharyngeal mucosa." Pathogenic bacteria clearly do not colonize in the non-smoking parents, they added. So it's possible the children from non-smoking households who had high harmful pathogen and low beneficial bacteria counts may have been genetically, anatomically, or immunity-prone.
Ping
I've never heard of this before. Are they just making this stuff up to justify smoking bans? Geesh!
So now smoking parents are effecting the childrens hearing?
This statement is a HUGE departure from conventional medical opinion. For years, docs have been harping on parents to not smoke around children due to increased ear infections and breathing problems. I agree that second hand smoke is not a good idea around children, especially asthmatics, but it's interesting to see that it apparently does NOT cause increased incidence of ear infections.
Good Grief - the study shows that it does NOT, yet they still say it does...........junk science at it's finest.
My bad; I missed that. I guess these researcher's must be moderates; unwilling to commit to a specific theory.
You are right about the departure from the conventional rant.
Granted it's only anecdotal, but my experience has been that the kids I knew with chronic ear infections were the kids of non-smokers. My daughter only had one, and it was a mild one when she was about 16 or 18 months old. That happened after she joined a play group and one of the other kids had chronic ear infections, and that kid's parents didn't smoke.
So they perform a study, then stand against the results of their own study.
That's science for you.
No - they are afraid of losing their grant money by having findings that are outside the politically correct expectations of results.
This isn't about science - it's about money.
Yes, extended contact with children outside the family is probably a much bigger risk factor for ear infections than second-hand smoke.
Not that it's wrong to have one's children in a play group. Not at all.
But 30+ hours per week in a "day care center" -- now that's wrong.
And that's where you'll find by far the highest incidence of ear infections.
You are right about the incidences of ear infections in children in day-care.........especially when they get placed there at 6 or 7 weeks old.
The ironic thing was that the child of the woman who had the play group/day care in her home was the one with the chronic ear infections. My daughter was only there 2 mornings a week, other than that she was with me at work or with daddy when he got home from work - and we are both smokers.
And on that note I promised her that we would go out for lunch today - so I will finish up my laundry and do just that!
have a good afternoon.
Yup. I smoked around my kids a good bit from birth to 2-3 years, and they rarely had ear infections. Then I went to work and put them in daycare, which also meant that I smoked a lot less around them, and they had CONSTANT ear infections.
DAYCARE causes ear infections, also colds, flu, pneumonia, etc., etc.. Children are germy little people, but apparently they're cool with the germs they're each used to-- the problem comes when they start sharing all those germs.
Yep! Anything to justify their cushy "grant money!"
Exactly.
And on that note I do believe I will take my child out to lunch and not worry about her getting an ear infection because people around may be smoking :)
Back in 1998 the British Medical Journal published a study that was widely heralded as demonstrating that reducing exposure to dust mites did not help asthma. That's the way it was reported. What the actual study concluded, however, was that current methods of eradicating dust mites were ineffective in controlling the dust mites. It had nothing to do with the correlation between dust mites and asthma, though that was the way the study was interpreted.
I'm lving proof of the fact that smoking doesn't harm children as much as they all say.
I was an asthmatic child and teenager(emergencies in the middle of the night etc) and the doctor told my mother not to let me smoke.I grew up in a non-smoking household.
I started smoking at 17,had my last asthma attack at 21,and have never had any asthma since then,and neither did any of my kids own who grew up surrounded by smoke.
I will be 73 in September and I still smoke and have no asthma.
Out of my 4 children 2 had many ear infections and one is autistic - they are all raised in a NON smoking home.
God Bless you, my FRiend.
Of course! Had we enlarged the target objective of the study then we could have scored a bullseye!
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