Culture Post: 1 in 3 Children Now Suffer From Chronic Illness

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by HealthDay.

Nearly 1 in 3 children live with a chronic condition that could significantly affect their health for the rest of their lives, a new study says.

This adds up to about 130,000 more children each year being diagnosed with a chronic illness.

This increase has been driven by diagnoses of ADHD/ADD, autism, asthma, prediabetes, and mood disorders like depression or anxiety, lead researcher Lauren Wisk, an assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said in a news release.

“The prevalence of childhood conditions is currently higher than previous estimates suggest,” she said. “Youth who are subject to socioeconomic vulnerability such as having less education, lower income, are on public insurance, or unemployed are all more likely to live with a chronic condition than youth with socioeconomic advantages.”

For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 236,000 people between 5 and 25 years of age who participated in the National Health Interview Survey between 1999 and 2018.

The results also showed that chronic illness increased among 18- to 25-year-olds, rising from about 19% to 29% between 1999 and 2018 — an additional 80,000 young adults per year.

Source: HealthDay
https://www.healthday.com/health-news/child-health/1-in-3-children-now-suffer-from-chronic-illness

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