Jump to full article: Medical News TODAY(UK), 2008-07-22
Intro: Babies exposed to cigarette smoke before birth or during the first months afterwards run a greater risk of developing asthma and allergy. This according to a doctoral thesis from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet.
It is a well known fact that babies are harmed by tobacco smoke in numerous ways, but it has always been difficult to separate the effects of the mother smoking during pregnancy and passive smoking after birth. Dr Eva Lanner�'s doctoral thesis now provides new detailed knowledge on how exposure to tobacco smoke early in life influences the risk of developing allergy and asthma respectively.
The thesis, which is based on the so called BAMSE study, shows that smoking during pregnancy increases the chances of the child developing asthma. The study showed that children of mothers who had smoked while pregnant ran double the risk of developing asthma before the age of four. There was also a clear correlation between the number of cigarettes smoked and the risk of developing asthma. . . .
Thesis: 'Parental smoking, wheezing and sensitisation in early childhood', Eva Lannero Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM), Karolinska Institutet
Jump to full article » |