Asthma in children is linked to respiratory problems in the newborn

Children who have been confronted with respiratory problems shortly after birth are more likely to be hospitalized for asthma in childhood, British researchers reported in the specialized "Archives of Disease in Childhood" magazine.

According to them, the relationship between perinatal respiratory problems and subsequent asthma may explain the link already found between cesarean delivery and the onset of asthma in children.

Dr. Gordon Smith, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Cambridge, and his colleagues have performed the analysis based on the information collected in a national database (the Scottish Morbidity Record). They were able to follow the passages in maternity, hospitalization in the neonatal units and subsequent admissions for asthma for nearly 200,000 children born at term between 1992 and 1995 in 23 Scottish maternity hospitals.

Among them, more than 2,000 children have been faced with a respiratory distress syndrome of the newborn, especially characterized by tachypnea (very important rapid breathing) transient. These newborns face respiratory problems were found to have an increased risk of hospitalization during childhood with a diagnosis of asthma, almost doubled compared to those who did not experience such problems after birth risk.

For those children who had respiratory problems, the risk of hospitalization for asthma is multiplied by 1.5 when they are born after a vaginal delivery and 2.2 when their mother had a cesarean section, the authors state . Moreover, in the study cohort, the risk of childhood asthma did not appear affected by a cesarean birth in the absence of such neonatal respiratory disorders: in these conditions, it is only multiplied by 1.1 .

These statistical associations were also maintained after adjusting the data to account for other factors that may interfere with the result as the mother's age, weight and sex of the child, the Apgar score (which assesses the health of the baby in his first minutes of life), or the fact that the caesarean was planned or not.

The authors of this study, already known between cesarean birth and childhood asthma association could have its source in neonatal respiratory problems. This explanation seems to them more plausible that, given the small proportion of children born by caesarean section facing such problems, this hypothesis would explain why the link between cesarean birth and asthma is so low.