Second-hand smoke ‘increases asthma hospitalisation risk for children’

Children who are admitted to hospital for asthma are much more likely to need to return to hospital within a year if they are exposed to second-hand smoke.

This is according to a new study from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and Penn State Milton S Hershey Children's Hospital, which measured levels of cotinine in the blood and in saliva of more than 600 children.

Cotinine is produced when the body breaks down nicotine, meaning it can offer a reliable scientific measure of tobacco exposure – much moreso than caregiver reports of tobacco exposure, which were shown to be unreliable.

A scientific analysis of actual exposure via cotinine measurement demonstrated a readmission risk in children exposed to second-hand smoke more than twice that of children not exposed.

Senior author Dr Robert Kahn, associate director of general and community pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, said: "Such a measure for exposure to tobacco smoke could be used to target specific interventions at caregivers of those children before discharge from the hospital."

Inhalation of second-hand smoke within homes and cars can put the health of children at risk, a message the UK government attempted to communicate through a Public Health England campaign last summer.