The risk of asthma in children is up 65% more stress on mothers.

Pregnant women with anxiety are more likely to have asthmatic children.


A study presented at the ERS Annual Congress held in Berlin recently, shows that pregnant women who suffer from stress, particularly in late pregnancy have a higher risk that your child suffers from asthma. Vincent Square, the area coordinator of asthma SEPAR (Spanish Society of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery), says that "recent studies have demonstrated the connection between the anxiety of the people close to the child and the early appearance of the first wheezing, but Both studies only examined the postnatal period. "

The data emerging from the study presented at the ERS show that pregnant women suffering from high anxiety are 65% more likely to have a child who develops asthma than mothers with a lower level of anxiety. The study also finds that nearly 13% of children whose mothers had experienced anxiety during pregnancy, suffering from asthma. Dr. Teresa Bazús, asthma and lung expert SEPAR member, explains that "the authors confirmed a strong link between maternal anxiety at 18 weeks and especially at 32 weeks of pregnancy, and asthma among children of 7.5 years of age. "

According to this study by British researchers, the risk of asthma is 17% higher in children whose mothers are stressed at 32 weeks of pregnancy, and 14% higher when the mother was stressed at 18 weeks. Although the results are even stronger among women in the group with more anxiety, because the additional risk of asthma in children may reach 65% in the group of mothers with more stress at 32 weeks and 53% in most severely stressed at 18 weeks.

Dr. Bazús says that "the work presented at the annual meeting of the ERS is an important milestone, because this is the first prospective study conducted in humans that examines the link between childhood asthma and maternal prenatal anxiety, which appears in the link there is a dose-response relationship and a high probability of asthma increased proportionally to the level of anxiety of the mother. " Asthma, the most common childhood disease, affects about one child in ten. Although the causes of this respiratory disease has not yet been fully defined, it is known that asthma attacks can be caused by, among others, emotional or psychological factors.

More than 5800 families under observation for eight years

To analyze the effects on asthma prenatal psychological factors, the researchers studied a sample of pregnant women residing in the former county of Avon leaving accounts between April 1 1991 to December 31 1992. To conduct the study analyzed data from 5810 mothers with children of the availability of the necessary information.

Maternal anxiety was assessed through questionnaires completed by mothers at 18 and 32 weeks of pregnancy. Based on the responses, researchers were able to divide women into four groups with different levels of anxiety. Asthma in children was evaluated at age 7 years and a half, through a questionnaire completed by mothers.

A clinical, bronchial hyperreactivity was also tested when the children reached eight years of age, using tests puncture (prick tests) to determine whether the subject's asthma was allergic origin and which allergens reacted child.

The British team said in their paper that they had not identified any negative effect of the fact that they were their own mothers to complete questionnaires (even mothers with anxiety symptoms tended to show more of those actually suffering from) and also to the families of she had lost contact had higher levels of anxiety, so the results presented at the conference could even represent an underestimation of reality. Moreover, the stress of mothers was not measured directly by the medical team, so there is no way of knowing if their state of anxiety was transient or chronic.

However, analysis of a small proportion of the sample by other researchers found a correlation between maternal anxiety during pregnancy and a disruption in the secretion of cortisol in children ten years old. Also, as the British team announced in Berlin, it is more likely that the bronchial hyperreactivity and asthma in children whose mothers suffer stress during pregnancy is linked to hormonal imbalance in the hypothalamus-pituitary axis as an allergic mechanism.