Smoking during pregnancy would be harmful to children but also to grandchildren. Grandchildren of grandmothers who smoked during pregnancy have an increased risk of asthma, even if their mothers did not consume nicotine.
Researchers at the University of Melbourne (Australia) carried out a study with 45,000 grandmothers and over 66,000 children. They analyzed smoking exposure during pregnancy of grandmothers and the use of asthma medication in grandchildren.
The results showed that, if grandmothers smoked while they were pregnant, there was an increased risk of asthma in grandchildren, even if their mothers did not smoke during pregnancy. The risk of asthma was increased from 10 to 22%.
“We have found that smoking in previous generations can influence the risk of asthma in subsequent generations. It can also be important in transmitting diseases to others,” says Dr. Caroline Lodge, study author and researcher. at the University of Melbourne. “The grandmother’s smoking may have altered the genes of the daughter she was carrying. These genetic mutations would then be transmitted to the grandchildren by their mother ”, specify the researchers.
Links already established
The results of this study confirm the conclusions of a study by researchers from the University of California (United States) published in 2013 in the medical journal Review of Obstetrics & Ginecology which revealed the impact of tobacco during pregnancy on health respiratory system of the future child but also on future generations.
An increasingly frequent disease
Asthma is a chronic disease characterized by difficulty in breathing, accompanied or not by a dry cough, attacks of shortness of breath with blowing. The frequency and intensity of seizures varies over time and from person to person. Symptoms can appear several times a day or a week, such as twice a year, occur without a specific cause, worsen during physical exertion or at night. The first chronic childhood disease, asthma affects one in ten children, and its frequency has doubled in fifteen years.
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