More asthma risk for kids spending hours in front of TV?

I can't find the article listed in the "In press" section of "Thorax" but I suspect more tedious ignorance below. The most reasonable interpretation of the findings: The children of poor people watch more TV and get more asthma

YOUNG children who spend more than two hours glued to the television every day increase their risk of developing asthma, new research shows. A UK study tracked 3000 children from birth to 11.5 years of age, and their parents were also asked to assess their TV watching habits. Six per cent of the children who had no symptoms of wheezing at 3.5 years went on to have asthma by the end of the study.

Children who watched TV for more than two hours a day were almost twice as likely to be in this new asthma group, according to research to be published in the journal Thorax. The study suggests sedentary behaviour in children can spark developmental changes in the lungs.

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The secret of long life? It's all down to how fast you react

High IQ is a winner once again

People's reaction times are a far better indicator of their chances of living a long life than their blood pressure, exercise levels or weight, researchers have discovered. Men and women with the most sluggish response times are more than twice as likely to die prematurely.

Edinburgh University and the Medical Research Council in Glasgow tracked 7,414 people nationwide over 20 years in a study which appears to confirm the adage that a healthy mind means a healthy body. The researchers suggest that people's reaction times are a measure of their intelligence, which in turn is an indicator of their body's `system integrity' - how well it is wired together. They said:`Our results suggest that `choice' reaction time, a moderately high correlate of intelligence, is an important risk factor for death from all causes, including cardiovascular disease.'

The study, published in the respected journal Intelligence this week, is the first to look at reaction times and mortality, comparing the results with known risk factors like smoking and drinking. The authors say there is growing evidence that people with higher IQs tend to live longer and healthier lives. While this can partly be put down to differences in lifestyles because more intelligent people are less likely to smoke and be overweight, much of the gap has previously been unexplained.

The 7,414 volunteers in the study have been followed since the mid-Eighties, when their reaction times were measured with an electrical device fitted with a small screen and five numbered buttons. The volunteers had to press the matching button when a number appeared on screen. The time they took to react was measured and averages worked out. Since then, 1,289 have died, 568 of them from heart disease. The researchers then compared the reaction times, smoking habits, weight and other factors of those who had died with those who had survived.

The results showed that people with slow reactions were 2.6 times more likely to die prematurely from any cause. Smoking was the only factor linked to a larger risk of death - as it made it 3.03 times more likely. Physical exercise, blood pressure, heart rate, waist-hip ratio, alcohol consumption and body-mass index all had a lesser effect.

In deaths caused specifically by heart disease, reaction time was the most important factor after blood pressure, this time having a greater effect than smoking. The researchers said: `It has been hypothesised that reaction time, as a measure of speed of the brain's information-processing capacity, may be a marker for bodily system integrity. `This way, slower reaction times, or poorer information-processing ability, might be an indication of suboptimal physiological functioning, which may in turn be related to early death.'

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