Fall Babies Tend to Be More Asthmatic
November 22, 2008
(ChattahBox) — According to a recent study, the time of the year when babies are born can affect their asthma risk. The study showed that those babies born before the outbreak of cold and flu season have a higher risk of developing childhood asthma than the babies born in any other time of the year. The research also showed that the risk can be minimized a number of ways.
“Children in the Northern hemisphere born in the fall months have the highest rates of asthma, which suggests that winter viruses, like RSV, cause asthma,” said study senior author Dr. Tina Hartert, director of the Center for Asthma Research and Environmental Health at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, in Nashville, Tenn. “What we need to prove now is that preventing these viruses could prevent asthma,” she added.
A study was carried out by research at the Vanderbilt University which analyzed data of 95,000 babies and their mothers in Tennessee for a relationship between the peak of winter respiratory viruses and asthma symptoms. The research showed that children born four months before the peak winter cold and flu have a greater chance of developing asthma than children born at other time of the year. The results of the study were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Researchers have been trying a long time to study the genetic and other variable reasons for developing asthma. They relate the reasons to genes as well as exposure to winter viral infections at a young age. Researchers found that nearly 70 percent of the infants had respiratory syncytial virus infection before their first birthday. Not all the children developed asthma, but nearly 40 percent of the children hospitalised for respiratory virus develop asthma by their teenage years.
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