Associations of Acculturation and Country of Birth with Asthma and Wheezing in Mexican American Youths

Background: Mexican Americans have lower rates of asthma than other ethnic groups in the United States. Objective: To examine the relationship between country of birth and acculturation with asthma and wheezing among Mexican American youths. Methods: We used Chi-squared statistics and logistic regression analyses to determine the associations of country of birth and acculturation with asthma and wheezing among 1,770 Mexican Americans age 12–19 years who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999–2002. Results. Mexican American adolescents born in the United States and those with high acculturation levels reported significantly higher prevalence rates of asthma, wheezing, and hay fever than their peers with low acculturation levels and born in Mexico. In multivariate analyses, youths with a high acculturation level had a higher risk of asthma than those with a low acculturation level independent of country of birth. Highly acculturated youths born in the US had a higher risk for wheezing compared with less acculturated US-born or Mexico-born participants after adjusting for confounding variables. In contrast, associations of asthma and wheezing with country of birth were not significant after controlling for acculturation. Conclusions. Our findings showed that both acculturation and country of birth were linked with the risk of asthma and wheezing, with acculturation having stronger effects than country of birth, among Mexican American youths. These findings may imply that factors modified by immigration and acculturation could influence the risk of asthma and wheezing. Identification of such factors could help in the design of asthma prevention programs.