Day care don't protect kids if mum has asthma
Study finds mother's history a strong predictor.
"Children who attend day care as infants gain protection against asthma as they grow, but not if their mother has a history of breathing trouble.
That's the conclusion of a new study by Boston researchers, who found that maternal, but not paternal, history of asthma undermines the benefits of day care on building up the immune system.
The findings appear in the May issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Roughly six in 10 children in this country attended some form of day care in 1995, according to the study. Thanks to the free trade in germs that occurs between kids, those who go to day care appear less vulnerable to allergies, asthma and other conditions that involve the immune system.
But not always.
In the new study, Dr. Juan Celedon, a lung specialist at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues followed 453 boys and girls with at least one parent with a history of allergies, hay fever or asthma. Of those, 238, or about half, had attended day care during their first year of life. Most attended in-home outfits with a small number of other playmates. The researchers used questionnaires to track the children's allergy and asthma experience until they were 6.
For children whose mothers didn't have asthma, going to day care in the first year reduced their risk of later breathing problems by 70 percent. "But for children whose mother had asthma and who went to day care, they were not protected," says Celedon.
What accounts for the difference isn't clear. It might be the result of something genetic or something that happened while the baby was in the womb. Or, Celedon adds, it could reflect an environmental exposure shared by mother and child after birth.
Whatever the case, Celedon says the results are similar to a previous finding that a mother's history of asthma dilutes the protective effect on her child's risk of breathing problems from having a cat around the house.
Dr. Jerry Shier, a lung expert and a member of the board of trustees of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, says parents shouldn't be overly concerned about the latest work. "Even if they have a family history of asthma they can go to day care," Shier says.
However, Shier adds, children who do have severe asthma or wheezing that's triggered by airway infections should probably not be in day-care settings."