Male smokers are more likely to have babies with asthma even before conception.
According to a research presented last September 8, 2014 at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Munich suggest that the exposure of the father to the harmful chemicals found in cigarette smoke before parenthood can affect his child. This research is the first study with humans investigating the connection between the smoking habit of a father and his child’s asthma. This new discovery adds to the growing number of evidences from animal researches.
The research studied the smoking habits of more than 13,000 men and women using questionnaires. The researchers scrutinized the connection in both the father and mother and considered the number of years each subject had smoked before conception, the frequency of asthma in the offspring and whether either or both of the parents quit prior the conception of the baby.
The study revealed that non-allergic asthma was considerably more common among children with fathers who smoked before conception. And the risk is increased if the father began smoking before the age of fifteen, and continues to increase the longer the smoking habit is. On the other hand, the researchers did not found any relevant link between the mother smoking before conception and the child’s asthma.
It is a known fact that maternal smoking can cause significant harm to the baby. According to Dr. Cecile Svanes of the University of Bergen, this research is very important because it is the first research to look at effect of pre-conception smoking of fathers and how it can affect the respiratory health of their offspring. It can be adduce from these results that any kind of air pollution, may it be occupational or chemical exposure, can affect the health of the children. It will guide and lead the policymakers in focusing their attention to the possible interventions and warn the public (young males) of the harmful effects of smoking and other types of exposures to their unborn offspring in the near future.
