COCKROACH ALLERGEN FOUND TO WORSEN ASTHMA.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

Asthma researchers found extremely high levels of cockroach allergen in the bedrooms of inner-city children suffering from asthma, according to a new medical study published Wednesday.

Allergy to cockroaches is a major reason that inner-city children with asthma experience a worsening of their disease, the report shows.

In the study of 476 children ages 4 to 9 with asthma, those who were allergic to cockroaches and lived in homes with high levels of cockroach allergen were hospitalized for asthma three times more often than other children, and had 78 percent more unscheduled visits to their doctor because of their asthma.

These children ``also had significantly more days of wheezing, missed school days and nights with lost sleep,'' said lead researcher Dr. David L. Rosenstreich, director of the division of allergy and immunology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Nearly 37 percent of the children in the study were allergic to cockroaches, 35 percent to dust mites and 23 percent to cats, the researchers reported Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

However, only cockroach allergy was associated with more severe asthma, the study showed.

Doctors in Los Angeles said the relationship between cockroaches and asthma has been known for years. But the study was significant because it measured actual levels of cockroach allergen in the homes of young asthmatics.

``This is just as much a problem in Los Angeles as it is in any city that has a large inner city,'' said Dr. Ron Ferdman, assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles.

``Inner-city children definitely have a higher rate of complications from asthma,'' he said. ``Probably cockroach allergen has something to do with that.''

Dr. Craig Jones, director of allergy and immunology at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center, said the hospital's Breathmobile mobile asthma clinic tests every patient for cockroach allergy.

``We're finding an extremely high rate of cockroach sensitization in the inner city,'' Jones said.

When an allergen, such as pollen, dust or cockroach, is inhaled, it lands on the bronchial tubes where an allergic reaction can occur. The reaction causes the tubes to swell, making it hard for a person to breathe.

Ferdman said 80 percent to 90 percent of children who have asthma have an allergic component that is either aggravating or triggering it off. The leading allergies are to pets, dust and cockroaches.

And ``once you have an allergy, you're at risk of having asthma,'' Rosenstreich explained. ``We found it surprising that cockroach allergen seemed to stand out more than other allergens we expected'' would be a problem, such as cigarette smoke, dust mites and cat allergen, he said. ``It's a much more important problem than we anticipated.''

The researchers studied inner-city children living in St. Louis, New York City, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Washington, D.C.

The majority of cockroach allergen in the home was detected in children's bedrooms, the researchers found. Of all the bedrooms examined, more than half contained extremely high levels of cockroach allergen in the dust.

Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, head of the asthma and allergic diseases center at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, pointed out that cockroach allergy could be a particular problem for inner-city children because they often don't get outside.

Many of these children may spend a lot of time eating and watching television in the bedroom, Platts-Mills said. ``If they eat in the bedroom, they'll have cockroaches in the bedroom.''

Because cockroaches need food and water to survive, crumbs in the bedroom and leaky faucets in the bathroom and kitchen provide the ideal habitat for these insects to survive, he said.