Genomic Functions – Health News

Posts Tagged ‘Birth’

Early exposure to antibiotics would increase by 13 percent the risk of childhood asthma, a figure much lower than known so far, according to a systematic review of the literature. However, more rigorous studies are needed.

The study, published in Pediatrics, “provides evidence for caution in interpreting this relationship,” said lead researcher Dr. Michael B. Bracken, an epidemiologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Bracken’s team reviewed the medical literature and identified 22 studies on how exposure to antibiotics during pregnancy or the first year of life influences the risk of developing asthma up to 18 years old.

Children who had been exposed to antibiotics between birth and first year of life were 52 percent more likely to develop asthma than those without such exposure. In the three studies of children exposed during pregnancy, the possibility grew 24 percent.

The team acknowledges that there may be potential biases. For example, parents of children with asthma are more likely to remember any early use of drugs and the initial symptoms of asthma may be confused with a respiratory infection and treated with antibiotics, leading to possible reverse causality. To study better, the team conducted a separate analysis based on factors such as study design.

As expected, retrospective studies showed a higher association: exposure to antibiotics in children doubled the risk of developing asthma. So did the jobs that were not controlled early respiratory infections. Read the rest of this entry »

The idea that small babies at birth are at risk of adults with high cholesterol is applicable only for children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy. There is increasing evidence of the relationship between being born small for gestational age (SGA, for its acronym in English) and high cholesterol in adulthood, said Wen Xiaozhong, of Harvard Medical School in Boston.

But with his team wondered whether this risk is increased in certain groups of people born SGA or the lowest 10 percentile for gestational age. Could the size at birth to overcome the influence of environmental factors that trigger this condition coexisting, which generates heart disease and cerebrovascular accident (CVA)? For example, maternal smoking during pregnancy is a major determinant of SGA in developed countries.

The team studied the records of birth and cholesterol levels of 1,370 adults aged 39 on average. 25 percent (345) said he had high cholesterol (34 percent in adults born SGA and 24 percent of those born at normal size). But only in adults born SGA and whose mothers had smoked during pregnancy was high risk for high cholesterol.

After eliminating other factors that could cause confusion, participants who had been exposed to excessive smoke snuff in the womb (at least 20 cigarettes daily) were 2.5 times more likely to have high cholesterol. Read the rest of this entry »