Among the common respiratory diseases in children, the prevalence of bronchial asthma is 10%, double the rate in adults and increasing in the last 5 years. Particularly in children under 2 years old, this rate is even higher.

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways, which is very sensitive to various irritants. If a child with asthma is exposed to irritants, the airways - mainly the bronchi - will swell, constrict, fill with mucus, so they will become blocked, causing the patient to have a cough, wheeze, and difficulty breathing.

According to Dr. Dr. Le Thi Thu Huong - Department of Pediatrics, Hanoi Medical University, there are many causes of asthma, of which the two most common causes of acute asthma attacks in children are allergens and viral infections.

Meanwhile, viral infections are common in children under 3 years of age because their immune systems are immature at that time. That is why the incidence of asthma is higher in children than in adults. Besides, the child's airway is forming, the size of the child's airway is also smaller than that of an adult. Just a slight inflammation also leads to spasm, narrowing of the airways, easy to cause hissing, wheezing sound like symptoms of bronchial asthma.

Worth mentioning, because bronchial asthma is a chronic disease, it is very difficult to treat the disease completely, because even if the child has no symptoms, the infection still takes place silently. If asthma is not controlled thoroughly, children with asthma with long-term lung damage will lead to an irreversible decline in lung function.

Source: Life & Health Newspaper, Dai Doan Ket Newspaper.