If you smoke your child may develop more allergies

Main Category: Allergy
Article Date: 22 Mar 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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If you smoke your child may develop more allergies
If you do not smoke, your pets may protect your baby from developing allergies. According to researchers, if you smoke your pets will make no difference to your baby's chances of developing allergies.

If you do not smoke, having pets around could reduce your child's risk by 50%.

This is according to research carried out by Dr. Dennis Ownby, Medical College of Georgiaa, Augusta, USA. He said "...inflammation in the airways caused by the particles and chemicals in cigarette smoke may be just as bad and block the effects, whatever they are, of being exposed to the dog or the cat."

Dr. Dennis Ownby presented his research at the annual meeting of AAAA (American Academy of Asthma, Allergy & Immunology).

For years parents wondered whether early exposure to cats or dogs might make a baby develop allergies to cats or dogs. Well, it seems that the opposite is the case. If you expose a baby to cats and dogs early in life you are helping him or her reduce the chances of developing an allergy. Unless, of course, you happen to smoke.

The research team wanted to see if pets with smoke around had any effect on an infant developing allergy risk. Ownby and his team studied the allergy histories of 474 homes in Detroit. All the families had newborns and they were monitored up to the age of 7.

In non-smoking families with pets, risk of allergy to dander, ragweed, dust mites and other allergens were 50% lower than in non-smoking families that did not have pets.

In the smoking families with pets, the babies had the same risk as the non-smoking families without pets.

Ownby said he hoped that his findings will give parents a good reason to give up smoking. There are now two reasons - give up not only for your own health, but also for your children's health.