Brief advice to parents on asthma and smoking does not reduce parental smoking
- Butler, Christopher
BACKGROUND
Existing evidence has found that asthmatic children have more severe disease if their parents smoke.
OBJECTIVE
To assess whether advice about child health alters the smoking habits in parents of asthmatic children.
SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS
Setting: Tayside and Fife, Scotland. Participants drew from families with an asthmatic child aged 2-12 years, living with a smoking parent. 123 general practices identified 1047 potential families, of which 501 agreed to take part.
METHOD
Randomized double-blind controlled trial.
LITERATURE REVIEW
No explicit strategy; 24 references.
INTERVENTION
Both groups received a commercially available leaflet on smoking. Parents in the intervention group also received advice on asthma and passive smoking, with a supporting leaflet and information on health benefits and how to quit.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Salivary continine concentrations in children and changes in reported parental smoking habits, 1 year after intervention.
RESULTS
Follow-up was available from 435 families (86.8%). There was no significant difference in changes in continine concentrations between the groups. Both groups had reduced concentrations compared to baseline with a slightly greater mean decrease in the control group (0.70 vs 0.88 ng/mL; net difference 0.19 ng/mL, 95% CI −0.86 to +0.48).
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
A brief intervention is not effective in reducing smoking. As the advice was not requested it may have been counterproductive, with parents asserting control by continuing unhealthy behavior. The overall cessation rate was lower than the unaided smoking cessation reported in two recent meta-analyses.