Black-white gap for asthma wider for kids

EVANSTON, Ill., Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Researchers find that the gap between black and white children in asthma hospitalizations and deaths has grown wider in the past quarter-century.

Dr. Ruchi Gupta and colleagues at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine found that 50 percent more black children are hospitalized with asthma now and 25 percent more die from the disease. They found that the racial gap for adults decreased between 1980 and 2002.

Researchers said that improved asthma treatment appears to have done little for black children.

"Further understanding of the reasons for these differences and strategies to eliminate them may start to close this unacceptable racial gap," Gupta said.