Effect of Smoking on Asthma

Asthma from the past two decades has been a major public health challenge. A number of studies have suggested that increasing air pollution can accelerate asthma attacks. The objective of the study is to examine the effect of smoking on the risk of developing asthma in male and female. National Family Health Survey round third (NFHS-3) with a sample size of 109041 household has been used for the study. Logistic regression analysis is used to estimate the effects of tobacco smoke & cooking smoke on asthma prevalence with different demographic and socio-economic variables. Due to the large sex differentials in the exposure to cooking smoke and tobacco smoke, a separate analysis is carried out for male and female. Results show that the prevalence of asthma is higher in females than males. The logistic regression show that the females are at a higher risk of asthma than male if exposed to smoking or smoking fuels. The adjusted effect of exposure to smoking on the prevalence of asthma is large and statistically significant for women. It can be concluded that effect of smoking are higher for females than for males.