Canada : Tuesday, 9 November 2010
A study, which followed 380 children at increased risk of asthma - a narrowing of the breathing tubes which is often caused by allergies - due to family history, found that those exposed to relatively high levels of dog allergen at the age of 7 were more like to have asthma.
In contrast, there was no relationship between cat-allergen exposure and a child’s risk of asthma, according to findings published in the journal Peediatric Allergy and Immunology.
Exactly why dogs were related to a higher risk of asthma, while cats were not, is not entirely clear. But one factor may be endotoxin, a substance produced by bacteria that is known to trigger inflammation in the airways, explained lead researcher Dr. Chris Carlsten, of Vancouver General Hospital in British Columbia, Canada.
Carsten found that children exposed to dog allergen at home were not at increased risk of developing an immune-system sensitization to dog allergen itself. Therefore, greater exposure to endotoxin may at least partly explain the association between having a dog in the home and a child’s risk of asthma.
“Dogs tend to have a lot of endotoxin on them, because they’re dogs”, Carlsten told Reuters Health. In contrast, cats have much less, he said.
So should families with a history of asthma of allergies opt for a kitten over a puppy, or no fluffy pets at all?
“This study doesn’t answer it,“ Carlsten said. “And in general, there is not enough evidence to reccommend for or against pets.”
He said that for now, his advice to parents is to base the decision on their family’s desire to have a pet, rather than the potential effects on asthma risk.
The findings are based on 380 children who were at increased asthma risk. At the outset, roughly half of the families were randomly assigned to an intervention aimed at lowering the child’s risk of developing allergies and asthma. That included encouraging mothers to breastfeed for at least four months, and having parents limit their children’s exposure to dust mites, pets and tobacco smoke.
Carsten’s team found that exposure to higher levels of dogs allergen at age 7 was associated with a nearly three-fold increase in the risk of asthma. But that was only among children in the intervention group.
Neither cat nor dust-mite exposure in infancy or at age 7 was related to the risk of asthma. Children with high dust-time exposure were, however, more likely to shown an immune system reaction to dust-mite allergen.
According to Carlsten, the findings underscore the complexity of the relationship between indoors-allergen exposure and children’s asthma risk. More research, he said, is still needed to understand those intricacies.
Story and Foto from : www.parent24.com, Amy Norton and Getty Images
