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MONDAY, July 9 (HealthDay News) -- The vitamin C in fruit and the omega-3 fatty acids in fish could help tame teens' asthma symptoms, a new study finds.
"Teens that have the lowest intake of fruits, vitamin C and omega-3 fatty acids tended to have lower pulmonary function and reported more respiratory symptoms than those with higher intake," said study author Jane Burns, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
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"This is a time in their lives when they should all have good lung function, and they may not be obtaining optimal lung function. This may affect their lung function later in life," Burns added.
Results of the study are published in the July issue of Chest.
About 20 million Americans -- 9 million of them children -- have asthma, according to the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. While the exact cause of the disease is still unknown, doctors do know that underlying inflammation of the airways is an important factor in the disease. Preventive treatments for asthma are aimed at reducing that inflammation.
Burns and her colleagues included more than 2,000 12th-grade students from 12 areas in the United States and Canada in the current study. Over the course of a year, they asked the teens about their diets, their general health and respiratory symptoms, and also tested the adolescents' lung function.
Most of the teens were white, about one-third were overweight, and nearly three-quarters didn't take a daily multivitamin. About one-quarter of the adolescents studied smoked.
Many of the teens -- about one-third -- had dietary shortfalls when it came to consumption of fruits, vegetables, vitamins A and E, beta-carotene and omega-3 fatty acids. A whopping 86 percent didn't consume the recommended five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables each day.
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