Photo/Illutration Swimming classes are especially popular among children. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Swimming lessons for kids with asthma and other allergic conditions offer no practical health benefits other than as a fitness regimen and teaching them how to stay afloat, researchers say.

Swimming classes are popularly regarded by parents as a means to help kids overcome health issues, but no such therapeutic effects were evident in a study involving more than 1,000 children.

“Swimming should not be recommended with expectations that it will prevent or treat allergy symptoms,” said one of the researchers involved in the study.

Yukihiro Oya, head of the Allergy Center of the National Center for Child Health and Development, and his colleagues examined about 1,100 infants born at the national center between November 2003 and December 2005 to gauge whether swimming classes from the age of 3 would help inhibit a condition known as stridor and those allergic to pollen and dust mites. The latter condition is called rhinitis.

The researchers monitored the subjects until they turned 5.

Stridor affects those suffering from asthma, and is characterized by wheezing sounds made when air passes through narrowed respiratory tracts while breathing.

Of the surveyed children, 126, or 11 percent, took swimming lessons when they were 3 years old, while 969, or 88 percent, did not.

The survey found that 265 children, or 24 percent, had developed stridor by the age of 3. The corresponding figure for rhinitis was 299, or 27 percent. At the age of 5, stridor affected 180, or 16 percent, over the past year. The corresponding figure for rhinitis was 387, or 35 percent.

When the researchers checked how taking swimming lessons at age 3 could affect stridor symptoms when infants turn 5, they discovered no discernible difference between the swimming group and children free from the practice.

No important difference was confirmed for rhinitis, either.

The researchers concluded that “swimming has no preventive or treatment effects for stridor” and “no effects to prevent or cure rhinitis.”

According to Oya, those with asthma are rarely prone to an attack during swimming, which helps to explain its popularity, coupled with easy access to facilities.

Now, advanced treatment methods allow children with health issues to enjoy not only swimming but also a variety of sports.

Still, Oya noted that swimming might do more harm than good, citing an overseas report that professional swimmers and other such people who spend much time at pool facilities could have exacerbated asthma conditions due to chlorine in the water.

“If children with asthma swim for hours on end, their condition could worsen,” said Oya. “Such children should swim to the proper extent to improve their physical strength and quality of life, not for preventing or curing asthma.”

The findings were published in the U.S. scientific journal Plos One at (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234161).

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