PHYSICAL and sexual abuse can leave psychological scars, but do they also make their mark in less obvious ways?
Puerto Ricans suffer higher rates of asthma than any ethnic group in the US. Previous studies have shown that exposure to violence and stress make asthma worse. To see if these factors, and child abuse specifically, could be contributing to asthma in Puerto Rico, Juan Celedon at Harvard Medical School, Boston, and colleagues interviewed more than 1000 children living there.
The 70 children who reported having been physically or sexually abused were twice as likely to have asthma as the other…
