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25 Jul 2008		Evidence that smoking puts babies at allergy risk

		Exposing babies to cigarette smoke before birth and in the first few months of life can lead to asthma and allergy, says new evidence. A student in Sweden looked at the effects of smoking on 4,089 children born between 1994 and 1996. She found that smoking during pregnancy increases the chances of the baby developing asthma - children of mothers who had smoked during pregnancy had double the risk of developing asthma symptoms, such as wheezing, by age four. The more cigarettes the mother smoked, the higher the risk of asthma and allergy, explained Dr Eva Lannero from the Karolinska Institutet. She added that passive smoking in early childhood also increases the risk of allergy. In her study, four-year olds who were exposed to tobacco smoke at home when they were two months old had more signs of allergy than children from non-smoking homes. Food and cat allergies in particular were more common in exposed children. Dr Lannero said: "This is particularly worrying as cat allergens are almost everywhere and are hard to avoid. We can't say how many, but some of these children will definitely develop chronic asthma." Dr Lannero and colleagues will continue to follow these children as they grow up, to discover more about the effects of smoking and other environmental factors on their risk of allergy and asthma. Lannero, E. Parental smoking, wheezing and sensitisation in early childhood. Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM), Karolinska Institutet.

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