Sun Ye, Treyster Zoya, Rastogi Deepa, Conrad Laura A
Division of Pulmonary Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Division of Pediatrics, Mt. Sinai Children's Hospital, New York, New York, USA.
Pediatr Pulmonol. 2025 Jun;60(6):e71175. doi: 10.1002/ppul.71175.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused dramatic changes in daily routines, healthcare access, and utilization in children with asthma, particularly urban minority children with poorly controlled asthma.
In this study, we aimed to elucidate changes in healthcare utilization, lung function, and weight as a result of the COVID-19 "shutdown" in patients followed at the Pediatric Asthma Center at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore.
We conducted a retrospective cohort study including children aged 2-21 with physician-diagnosed persistent asthma. We compared healthcare utilization, lung function, asthma control, and weight changes before and after the COVID-19 lockdown (March 16, 2020 to June 1, 2020).
This study included 101 children (61% Hispanic, 28% Black) with an average age of 9.2 (±4.7) years. There was a statistically significant decrease in hospitalization rates, emergency department visits, oral steroid use, urgent care visits and office visits pre- and post-COVID-19 shutdown, which was associated with improvement in asthma control (p < 0.001) but there was no significant improvement in lung function. Obesity rates increased overall from 29.7% to 43.9%, but weight gain did not differ based on asthma severity. Weight gain was disproportionally higher in a small sub-population of patients who needed step-up therapy.
Inner-city children with high asthma morbidity saw a significant reduction in healthcare utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic, with improved asthma control but no change in spirometry results. Despite an increase in obesity rates overall, weight changes did not differ across asthma severities, suggesting increase in obesity was not mediated by asthma severity.
新冠疫情导致日常生活、医疗服务获取以及哮喘患儿（尤其是哮喘控制不佳的城市少数族裔儿童）的医疗服务利用情况发生了巨大变化。
在本研究中，我们旨在阐明蒙特菲奥里儿童医院儿科哮喘中心随访的患者因新冠疫情“封锁”而导致的医疗服务利用、肺功能和体重变化。
我们进行了一项回顾性队列研究，纳入了年龄在2至21岁、经医生诊断为持续性哮喘的儿童。我们比较了新冠疫情封锁前后（2020年3月16日至2020年6月1日）的医疗服务利用、肺功能、哮喘控制情况和体重变化。
本研究纳入了101名儿童（61%为西班牙裔，28%为黑人），平均年龄为9.2（±4.7）岁。新冠疫情封锁前后，住院率、急诊科就诊次数、口服类固醇药物使用、紧急护理就诊和门诊就诊次数均有统计学意义的显著下降，这与哮喘控制的改善相关（p < 0.001），但肺功能没有显著改善。肥胖率总体从29.7%升至43.9%，但体重增加在不同哮喘严重程度之间没有差异。在一小部分需要强化治疗的患者中，体重增加比例更高。
在新冠疫情期间，哮喘发病率高的市中心儿童的医疗服务利用显著减少，哮喘控制得到改善，但肺活量测定结果没有变化。尽管总体肥胖率有所上升，但体重变化在不同哮喘严重程度之间没有差异，这表明肥胖率的增加不是由哮喘严重程度介导的。
