Researchers at the University of Bristol have found that by 6 months of age, 21% of British infants had had an attack of wheezing compared with only 10% in the Czech Republic. Different smoking behaviours were found to be influential in each country.
The findings were announced by Dr John Henderson, the asthma expert on the Children of the 90s project, also known as ALSPAC (Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children). This study based in Bristol, has monitored the health and development of over 14,000 children from pregnancy. A comparative study is ongoing in the Czech Republic.
Dr Henderson said, “The Children of the 90s study and its Czech counterpart enables us to try and shed more light on the early origins of asthma. We wanted to compare the rates of wheezing in different countries and investigate the different environmental factors that might explain these”.
The researchers found that mothers in the Bristol study were more likely to have smoked in pregnancy compared to mothers in the Czech Republic (18% versus 7%) and this linked with early wheezing in the Bristol babies but not in Czech babies. In the Czech Republic it was passive exposure to tobacco smoke that proved to be more influential.
“This does not explain why the Czechs have so much less wheezing”, Dr Henderson said, “but it does provide clues to the causes. Factors such as differences in the types of cigarettes smoked in the two countries may be important and need to be addressed.”
Notes:
1. “Smoking during pregnancy and postnatal tobacco smoke exposure: cross cultural differences in associations with wheeze in infancy”. J Henderson, A Sherriff, K Northstone, L Kukla, D Hruba, the ALSPAC Study Team and ELSPAC co-ordinating centre. European Respiratory Journal.
2. Please acknowledge ‘Children of the 90s’ in any reporting.