Parental stress may increase asthma risk

Living in a stressful household may increase the risk of childhood asthma, a new study indicates.

According to researchers from the University of California in the US, children with stressed parents are more susceptible to the effects of pollution and have a higher incidence of asthma.

Previous studies have indicated that a child’s risk of developing asthma is increased if their mothers were stressed during pregnancy.

Stress is also known as a trigger for asthma attacks.

In the study, involving almost 2,500 children aged five to nine years, the researchers looked at socioeconomic status, parental stress, pollution levels and maternal smoking during pregnancy.

They found that children exposed to pollution had a higher risk of developing asthma. But this risk increased even more if the children came from stressful households, where the parents described their lives as ‘unpredictable’, ‘uncontrollable’ or ‘overwhelming’.

Stress also was associated with larger effects of in utero tobacco smoke.

“These results suggest that children from stressful households are more susceptible to the effects of traffic-related pollution and in utero tobacco smoke on the development of asthma,” the researchers said.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ireland has the fourth highest prevalence of asthma in the world. Approximately 500,000 have the condition, and asthma causes about 80 deaths a year here.

For more information, go to irishhealth.com’s asthma clinic.
Click on: http://www.irishhealth.com/clin/asthma/index.html

[Posted: Tue 21/07/2009]