Washington, November 16 (ANI): Asthma does not adversely impact a child's educational performance, a new study has concluded.
In contrast, ethnicity and social deprivation were associated with poorer educational outcomes, the researchers said.
Chris Griffiths, Professor of Primary Care at the Centre for Primary Care and Public Health, at the Blizard Institute, part of Queen Mary University of London, said: "We wanted to test whether asthma is linked with poorer academic achievement as this could affect a child's chances of success later on in life. Instead we found children with asthma did as well as, or slightly better than their peers in these tests.
"These findings will reassure parents of children with asthma - and teachers. Policymakers should target social deprivation and ethnicity in order to improve our children's educational attainment."
Researchers from Queen Mary, University of Edinburgh and Mayhew Harper Associates looked at data for 12,136 children from 97 schools in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets - the UK's third most deprived borough.
Each child had sat at least one national examination at Key Stages 1-3 over a four-year period. Researchers analysed the children's educational results alongside clinical, housing and benefits data to measure the effect of asthma, social adversity and ethnicity.
Social adversity was linked to significantly poorer results as were mental health problems and special educational needs. Bangladeshi children were found to have significantly worse results than white children, although this was not the case for those from other minority ethnic backgrounds.
The study has been published in the journal PLOS ONE. (ANI)
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