Daily HealthBeat Tip

Kids versus smoke

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

If you are a nonsmoker, just breathing air tainted with cigarette smoke can raise your chances of being sick. Now a study shows that some children are at greater risk than others when they are around tobacco smoke � because of their genes.

Dr. Frank Gilliland of the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine looked at variants of a gene involved in the body's response to tobacco smoke. His just-published study was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

The study found that kids with a particular gene variant who were exposed to second-hand smoke were more likely to be absent from school because of illness.

Gilliland says it's another reason to keep kids away from second-hand smoke.

"Kids are a susceptible group. And some substantial portion who have this genotype are more susceptible." (six seconds)

Gilliland's advice: Never smoke around children.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: January 12, 2005

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