NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Infants who experience lung disease shortly after birth have an increased risk of hospital admission for asthma in later childhood, UK investigators report. They point out that this may explain the known link between cesarean delivery and asthma.

Dr. G. C. S. Smith, at Cambridge University, and colleagues base their research on information obtained from Scottish Morbidity Records. They extracted data on infants delivered between 37 and 43 weeks of pregnancy between 1992 and 1995. This information was linked to hospital admissions with a diagnosis of asthma between 1992 and 2000.

The study group included 173,319 births, among which 2230 infants were diagnosed with early breathing problems, according to the team's report in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Those infants who experienced lung problems at birth were at increased risk of being hospitalized for asthma. The risk was highest for babies delivered by c-section rather than vaginally.

The association was not influenced by maternal age, induction of labor or the child's birth weight, gender or Apgar score, the authors observe.

Other studies have found increased risks of asthma among children delivered by c-section, Smith and colleagues note, but the relationship was relatively weak, and the studies lacked information on complications affecting the newborn.

"Our data suggest that the association between caesarean delivery and later asthma may be mediated" by early lung disease, the authors write, and may explain why the association between the two is so weak, since most infants delivered this way do not experience breathing problems.

SOURCE: Archives of Disease in Childhood, October 2004.

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