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Abstract
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There is growing literature on the impact of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) on development and worsened control of various atopic conditions. Domestic violence and abuse is a pervasive global public health issue with a myriad of health sequalae that negatively impact all communities. As a form of gender-based violence, DVA disproportionately affects girls and women along with the historically marginalized or those at the intersection of multiple forms of oppression. However, studies on DVA and atopic diseases in adults have mostly been limited to cross-sectional data and understanding patterns of association.1
Nash et al address pivotal knowledge gaps in this growing area of research by utilizing a retrospective longitudinal design; evaluating DVA's relationship with the development of various atopic conditions; and conducting the study with a large, diverse, and generalizable U.K. population. For women without prior history of atopic conditions, women exposed to DVA were compared with those unexposed in terms of new diagnoses of asthma, atopic dermatitis, and allergic rhinoconjunctivitis. Four unexposed women were matched by age and deprivation quintile, reflecting socioeconomic status, to each exposed patient. The authors adjusted their analyses for smoking status.
They included 13,852 exposed and 49,036 unexposed women in their analyses with median follow-up period of 2.45 and 3.11 person-years, respectively. Compared with unexposed women, the DVA-exposed group had higher proportion of current smoking. In adjusted analyses, women exposed to DVA had 52% increased risk of developing an atopic disease during the study period. This pattern remained consistent when evaluating each individual condition: 69% increased risk of developing asthma, 40% increased risk of developing atopic dermatitis, and 63% increased risk of developing allergic rhinoconjunctivitis. Two sensitivity analyses--the first evaluating those whose DVA exposure occurred only during the study period and the second adding ethnicity as a covariate--supported the robustness of these findings...
Language: en |