Asthma and allergic rhinitis were analyzed in a random sample of school children (n=6174) residing in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood methodology was applied through a standardized questionnaire. The sample was obtained with a bietapic design. Cumulative prevalence of asthma and wheezing was 6.8% (95% CI 6.2, 7.4) and 20% (95% of CI 19.7, 21.8) respectively; the prevalence of rhinitis was 5.0% (95% CI 4.5, 5.6). Family history of asthma odds ratio (OR) 2.33 (95% CI 1.78-3.05), respiratory infection after birth (OR) 3.44 (95% CI 2.76-4.29), and exposure to environmental tobacco (OR) 1.35 (95% CI 1.06-1.68) were the strongest risk factors for asthma and allergic rhinitis. The multifactorial etiology of asthma and allergic rhinitis was confirmed, as well as the importance of early exposure to environmental factors.

Letters to the editor in Farmacia Hospitalaria significantly increased during the last two years of the period studied and were practically non-existent before this. It is worth noting that many of the letters were written in collaboration with other health professionals and with the support of a number of institutions. It is compulsory that the letters meet publishing requirements, with the exception of a number of authors and references which were published without being thoroughly checked beforehand.

Background The European Environment Agency estimates that 75% of the European population lives in cities. Despite the many advantages of city life, the risks and challenges to health arising from urbanization need to be addressed to tackle the growing burden of disease and health inequalities in the cities. This article presents the study protocol of the Urban Environment and Health: a cross-sectional multiregional project based on Population Health Surveys in Spain (DAS-EP project), that aims to investigate the complex association between the urban environmental exposures (UrbEE) and health. Methods DAS-EP is a Spanish multiregional cross-sectional project that combines Population Health Surveys (PHS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) allowing to collect rich individual level data from 17,000 adult citizens participating in the PHS conducted in the autonomous communities of the Basque Country and Andalusia, the Valencian Community, and the city of Barcelona in years 2021–2023. This study focuses on the population living in cities or metropolitan areas with more than 100,000 inhabitants. UrbEE are described by objective estimates at participants’ home addresses by GIS and subjective indicators present in PHS. The health outcomes included in the PHS and selected for this study are self-perceived health (general and mental), prevalence of chronic mental disorders, health-related quality of life, consumption of medication for common mental disorders, and sleep quality. We aim to further understand the direct and indirect effect between UrbEE and health as well as to estimate the impact at the population level taking respondents’ socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics, and lifestyle into account. Discussion This study is a clear commitment to the generation of urban environment indicators within the field of public health with a health equity perspective. The results will be novel for the inclusion of objective & subjective UrbEE as well as the combination of PHS from different study areas and GIS estimates. This methodological approach will provide a large volume of information and a large sample size of the study. The results will ultimately help identify urban indicators, increasing the capacity to detect and intervene in community health, improving the routine surveillance and monitoring of the cities’ health information systems.

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