EDITORIALS
Breast feeding and childhood asthma
Correspondence to:
Dr Wendy Oddy, Division of Population Sciences, Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Centre for Child Health Research, University of Western Australia, PO Box 855, West Perth WA 6872, Australia; wendyo@ichr.uwa.edu.au
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Asthma is the most chronic disease of childhood and the leading cause of morbidity in children globally as measured by emergency department visits, hospitalisations and days of missed school.1 Susceptibility to asthma may be increased by factors present early in life, including low birth weight, preterm birth, young maternal age and male gender. Environmental allergens including household smoking, house dust mite, grasses or pollens are also implicated. Conversely, early exposure to respiratory infections may be protective, although certain infections are suspected to increase the risk. Against this complex aetiological background, there is some evidence that breast feeding may protect against the development of asthma in children.2 3
In this issue of Thorax, a birth cohort study by Scholtens and colleagues assesses whether the association between breast feeding and asthma measured longitudinally from 1 to 8 years of age is influenced by maternal and paternal allergy (see page 604).
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