plus 2 more, “C-section may raise kids' asthma risk: Study - The Province” |
- C-section may raise kids' asthma risk: Study - The Province
- BPA May Raise Risk of Asthma in Kids - YAHOO!
- Household Dirt Won't Raise Asthma Risk in Infants - AZCentral.com
| C-section may raise kids' asthma risk: Study - The Province Posted: 28 Feb 2010 04:31 AM PST NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children born by caesarean delivery are at increased risk for developing asthma, particularly if their parents have allergies, according to a report published this month. C-section has been thought to be a risk factor for asthma, although the relationship is controversial, Dr. H. A. Smit, from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven, the Netherlands, and colleagues note in the report. Smit's team analyzed data from 2917 children to assess the association between caesarean delivery and asthma or allergies at 8 years of age. Overall, 362, or 12.4 percent, of the children developed asthma at age 8, the researchers report, and 8.5 percent had been delivered by c-section. Overall, children delivered by c-section were 79 percent more likely to develop asthma than children born vaginally, the investigators found. The association between c-section and asthma was even stronger for children born to one or two allergic parents than for children born to parents without allergies. "Our results emphasize the importance of gene-environment interactions on the development of asthma in children," Smit and colleagues conclude. "The increased rate of caesarean section is partly due to maternal demand without medical reason. In this situation, the mother should be informed of the risk of asthma for her child, especially when the parents have a history of allergy or asthma," they wrote. SOURCE: Thorax, February 2009. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| BPA May Raise Risk of Asthma in Kids - YAHOO! Posted: 28 Feb 2010 06:04 AM PST SUNDAY, Feb. 28 (HealthDay News) -- Mouse pups whose mothers were exposed to a common but controversial chemical developed allergic asthma, new research has found. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical commonly found in polycarbonate plastic bottles and the aluminum lining of food and beverage cans. Production of the chemical started about 40 years ago, a timing that scientists note coincides with increasing asthma rates. Various U.S. health agencies recently pledged $30 million toward short- and long-term research aimed at clarifying the health effects of BPA. It has caused problems in lab animals and in people who have had occupational exposure. On Thursday, Maryland became the third state to tackle the issue, when the state legislature passed a ban on BPA in cups and bottles used by children younger than age 4. Minnesota and Connecticut passed similar laws last year. Although the newest study looked only at mice, several experts believed that the findings could be worrisome for humans. "They're using what are probably going to be reasonable estimates of human neonatal exposure, and that seems to have an effect on the developing immune system or sensitivity to asthma," said Dr. Steve Georas, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine and director of the Mary Parkes Center for Asthma, Allergy and Pulmonary Care at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. "If you take it together with some epidemiologic studies, I would consider it cause for concern." Dr. Erick Forno, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine added that "the mice they used are very well-accepted models for asthma and allergies so it should be a very good model of what we would expect to happen in humans, although that is not always the case." The findings were to be presented Sunday in New Orleans at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology annual meeting. Previous studies by the same group had also suggested that pups born to mothers who had been exposed to BPA had an increased susceptibility to allergic asthma. The new study focused on which doses might tip the scale. The researchers put 0.1, 1 or 10 micrograms per milliliter of BPA in the drinking water of female mice before, during and after pregnancy. Once born, their pups were injected with ovalbumin to make them susceptible to asthma. Mice born to mothers who had been exposed to 10 micrograms of BPA developed airway problems, though that did not occur among mice born to mothers with lower or no exposure. "It's an exciting finding, an initial finding," Forno said. "I think the next thing is going to have to be not only the level of exposure but also how much or how prolonged does the exposure have to be and if there are any other factors involved." The study's senior author, Dr. Terumi Midoro-Horiuti, an associate professor of pediatrics and biochemistry and molecular biology in the Child Health Research Center at Children's Hospital, University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said her group is now collecting cord blood in humans, grouping that according to BPA exposure and following offspring to see if they develop asthma. A second study being presented at the meeting found that children whose mothers had high levels of folate, a B vitamin, during pregnancy were more likely to develop asthma by the age of 3. Too little folate, or folic acid, can contribute to neural tube defects in babies. "This goes along the lines of thinking if some is good, more is better, and we have seen certainly with vitamin supplements, especially with antioxidants, that more is not necessarily better and may be worse," Horovitz said. "Here we're seeing it again." Data came from 507 mothers of children with asthma and 1,455 mothers of children without asthma, all part of the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study. "In both cases, these studies illustrate how much prenatal environmental influence there is," Horovitz said. More information The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology has more on childhood asthma. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Household Dirt Won't Raise Asthma Risk in Infants - AZCentral.com Posted: 28 Feb 2010 06:33 AM PST SUNDAY, Feb. 28 (HealthDay News) -- Exposure to unclean conditions early in life doesn't affect a child's risk of developing asthma, researchers say. "In an earlier study, we found that infants were exposed to high levels of endotoxin and allergens [mite and cockroach] in their day-care centers. Therefore, we were anxious to find out, through a birth cohort study, if infants from low-income families with high risk of asthma might be protected from the development of the disease," lead author Vera E.V. Rullo said in a news release. The new study included 104 newborns in Brazil who were from low-income families and at high risk for asthma. The researchers assessed respiratory infections, breast-feeding, exposure to allergens and endotoxins (toxins associated with certain bacteria), and wheezing in the children. By the time the children were 5, about 19 percent of them had persistent wheezing. Only respiratory infection in the first year of life was found to be associated with persistent wheezing. Allergen and endotoxin exposure and breast-feeding for the first six months of life had no effect on the development of asthma, the researchers found. The study authors also reported that 27 percent of the children had sensitization to a species of house dust mite called D. pteronyssinus, but this had no association with persistent wheezing. The study was presented Saturday at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology annual meeting, in New Orleans. More information The U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute has more about asthma. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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