Arsenic exposure makes children vulnerable to pneumonia

Scientists have found children under five exposed to arsenic run twice the risk of developing pneumonia than those unexposed to the chemical.

The ICDDR,B on Thursday said their scientists and international colleagues had carried out the first-of-its-kind study that has been recently published in the journal ‘Environmental Health’.

In Bangladesh, pneumonia is the biggest cause of death of children under five, accounting for 27 percent of all deaths.

It is estimated that more than 35 million people in Bangladesh are at risk of being exposed to arsenic contamination.

The scientists looked at arsenic concentration in urine samples of 153 children aged between 1 month and to 5 years with “severe” and “very severe” pneumonia.

For comparison, they also looked at 296 healthy children in the same age group for this ‘case-control study’.

The study was conducted from January 2012 to September 2013 at the ICDDR,B’s rural field site Matlab with scientists from the US’s Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The findings suggest that “even low to moderate arsenic exposure may make children more vulnerable to pneumonia”, Dr Christine Marie George, lead author and assistant professor in the department of international health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said.

“This is likely because the arsenic in their drinking water is weakening their immune systems, making them more vulnerable to infections,” added George in a statement.

Chronic arsenic exposure reduces CD4 T cell numbers, which are vital for mediating adaptive immunity to a variety of pathogens, affecting the overall immune functions of the human body.

This could increase the risk of pneumonia in children, senior consultant on the study and former head of the ICDDR,B’s Matlab Hospital Dr Mohammad Yunus said.

He told bdnews24.com that the reduction of arsenic contamination was the key to check fatal pneumonia.

“Infants get arsenic from their mothers in the womb. Later they get exposed when they start drinking water after six months of age, if the home tube-well is arsenic contaminated,” he said