Children with Recurrent Respiratory Tract Infections Tend to Belong to Families with Health Problems

ABSTRACT. Children (7-11 years of age) who had recurrent respiratory tract infections (RTI) treated with antibiotics as preschoolers ( n =41), and their families were compared with regard to medical and social factors to families with children of comparable age who had had no such infections as preschoolers, or only isolated episodes (controls; n =29). All the children studied had attended day-care centres as preschoolers. The two groups of children did not differ with regard to socio-economic conditions or age at admission to day-care centres. There was a difference in the two groups with regard to signs noted at physical examination ( p <0.05), eardrum changes being observed in 34% of the children with recurrent episodes of RTI as preschoolers and in none of the controls ( p < 0.001). Questionnaires answered by parents indicated diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases, to be significantly more frequent in the families of the children with recurrent RTIs as preschoolers than in those of the controls ( p <0.01). Parents of the controls were more often satisfied with their own health ( p <0.05) and reported fewer symptoms of minor illness ( p <0.05), as compared with parents of the children with recurrent RTIs as preschoolers. Thus, the results of the present study support the idea that children with recurrent bacterial RTIs as preschoolers tend to belong to families with health problems.