Parents' beliefs impact kids' asthma control

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Asthma control in over one in three children with asthma is not as good as it could be, and in many cases the suboptimal control relates to potentially modifiable beliefs of the parents, new research suggests. In a study of 754 children between 2 and 12 years old with persistent asthma, 280, or 27 percent, had "suboptimal control" of their asthma. Nearly half of the children with suboptimal control underused controller medication. In telephone interviews with the parents who these children, Dr. Tracy Lieu, from Harvard Medical School, Boston, and colleagues found that parental beliefs seem to play an important role in asthma control. Specifically, they found that children were more likely to have troublesome asthma symptoms if their parents had low expectations for how well their asthma could be... [read full story]