Wood and his colleagues recommend that doctors begin evaluating asthmatic children for mouse allergy. We think that doctors need to change their approach to inner-city asthma and take this into account. We need to test for this allergy, ask families about mouse infestation, and recommend aggressive extermination of mice just like we do for cockroaches. They will also continue to define its clinical significance. Nationally, it is estimated that more than 7 percent of children now have the disease.
Researchers estimate that asthma is twice as common in the inner city in comparison to other areas.
Baltimore, Washington D.C., the Bronx in New York, East Harlem in New York, St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit. The children were diagnosed with asthma and lived in neighborhoods where 30 percent or more of the households had incomes below the 1990 poverty level.