By Joy Watters

THE SHOCK report that more than a third of Scottish teenagers experienced asthma symptoms in a year came as “no surprise” to a consultant working with asthmatic children in Tayside and Fife.

The figures presented at the World Asthma Meeting in Bangkok claim that around 37% of Scots aged 13 and 14 were affected.

Lead consultant in children’s respiratory medicine Dr Somnath Mukhopadhyay welcomed the wave of publicity that the report has created, saying more resources had to be put into researching the disease for which there is currently no cure.

Asthma is the most common disease in children in the UK and it is on the increase. National Asthma Campaign Scotland figures state that 1 in 6 children will be diagnosed at some point in their lives.

Dr Mukhopadhyay said his work in the clinic at Ninewells supported the sort of figures that the report revealed for the teenagers but that there was also a problem with younger children. While the incidence of the disease may be lower in the younger ones, it was crucial to diagnose and manage it as soon as possible.

“There is a tremendous amount of distress caused by asthma and it has to be publicly acknowledged,” he said.

“We in the children’s asthma clinic have a continuing stream of referrals, not just from 13 and 14-year-olds but from much younger ones, the two-year-olds and the three-year-olds who have got asthma.’’

He said there was a lot of discussion about asthma in adults but it was important to highlight children, because the seeds of asthma were often sewn in early childhood and sometimes even in foetal life.

The disease had to be extensively researched. The UK was followed by New Zealand and Australia in the list of prevalence of asthma, suggesting a genetic component.

“We have just started work in Tayside to develop a children’s asthma database to examine the genetic factor,’’ he said.

Professor Brian Lipworth, head of the Asthma and Allergy Research Unit at Ninewells, urged people not to over-react to the report figures, saying he was keen to learn more about how the data was gathered and to see the full report, which will be published in May.

He said, “Having a symptom does not equate to having asthma. It may well be that in Scotland we are more astute at picking up asthma.”

He did, however, give an assurance that the standard of care in Tayside for people with asthma was “top notch.’’

Most of that care took place through GPs and a recent audit of 10 practices in Tayside showed the standard of asthma care was “absolutely fine.’’