Parenting Children

At least some of the biological risk for childhood asthma and allergies traces back to the womb, new research suggests.
Both the order of birth and even the way a baby is delivered have a significant impact on the long-term strength of a child’s allergic defenses, scientists say.

Some Scientists said it had evidence indicating that when a specific genetic marker for allergic and asthmatic development is present among a first-born child, it appears to raise the risk for allergic conditions as far as 10 years down the road. However, when the exact same marker is present in a family’s second or third child, the gene seems to have exactly the opposite effect — actually lowering such risk.

Among four year-olds attending Head Start programs in New York City, those who had older siblings were more likely to experience respiratory symptoms including an episode of wheezing in the past year than those who were oldest or only children. Children with at least two older siblings were also 50% more likely than other children to have gone to an emergency department or been hospitalized overnight for breathing problems. These findings from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health were recently pre-published online in the journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy.

Another team of researchers suggested that regulatory cells associated with proper immune function may be impaired in babies delivered by Caesarean section. They think the manner of delivery could actually influence immune system development and ultimately asthma/allergy risk could be due to the fact that vaginal labor provides beneficial exposure to birth canal microbes that simply aren’t available to a C-section baby.

I find this whole thing very interesting, what do you think about birth order and/or delivery method and the asthma and allergy relation?

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