Health Update: Asthma exercise

LOCAL schools could help to identify children with asthma by organising a five-minute run during PE.

Teachers at a school in Weybridge, Surrey, screened 237 children aged between 8-12 by measuring peak expiratory flow rates after a period of running to check for exercise-induced broncho-spasm. Some 31 children failed the test; six were known asthmatics and 19 were found to be new cases of asthma, says a report in Archives of Disease in Childhood. Screening children at school could identify some of the 50 per cent who go undiagnosed.