Breastfeeding and risk of asthma, hay fever and eczema

Abstract

Background: Breastfeeding is commonly proposed to protect against atopic diseases.

Exclusive Breastfeeding Duration and Allergic Asthma Severity in Children

“…However, it did not possess any major effect on asthma in a population with adjusted confounding variables, such as gender, smoking history, age, body mass index, and birth weight. 10 This study suggested that these contrasting results might arise due to differences in study population, adjustments to confounding variables, and further analysis regarding breast milk composition.…”

“…These factors included sex, age, race, maternal age, childbirth delivery method, history of atopy, environment, smoking, air pollution, respiratory infections, body mass index, birth weight, and socioeconomic conditions. 3,8,10,23 Formula milk which contains probiotic can also affect allergic asthma through environmental improvement of the gut. 24 In addition, the factor that might have a lot of influence on the results of this study was the immunotherapy underwent by the respondents.…”

“…9 On the contrary, other study mentioned that in a risk-adjusted population, breastfeeding did not have major impact to asthma development. 10 Experts around the world recommend breastfeeding to be initiated in the first hour of life and to be continued given exclusively for 6 months. The term exclusive breastfeeding refers to giving infants only human maternal milk without any addition of any complementary foods nor formula milk.…”

Advances in asthma, asthma-COPD overlap, and related biologics in 2018

“…Capitalizing on the longitudinal follow-up of 2311 children in the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) study, Tran et al 49 demonstrated that although the presence of atopic dermatitis without allergic sensitization did not increase the risk of asthma by age 3 years, atopic dermatitis with allergic sensitization at 1 year increased asthma risk by 3 years 7-fold (and increased the risk of food allergy 15-fold). Ek et al 50 analyzed data from more than 336,000 participants in the UK Biobank to examine the odds of self-reported asthma depending on breast-feeding and found that breast-feeding had no significant effect on asthma but was associated with increased risks for hay fever and eczema. Findings from the Inner City Asthma Consortium's Urban Environmental Factors and Childhood Asthma (URECA) cohort demonstrated a protective effect of greater levels of indoor pet and pest allergens during early life on the risk of asthma at age 7 years.…”

Register‐based observational studies – who will endorse that maternal smoking lowers the odds for developing hay fever and eczema?

“…An article published last week in a prestigious medical scientific journal includes the finding: “ Maternal smoking around birth and smoking in house seem to be risk factors for developing asthma (OR=1.03, P=0.047), while having a protective effect on hay fever and eczema (OR=0.94, P=3.54x10 ‐6 ) ” (Ek, Karlsson, Carlos, Rask‐Andersen, Johansson, ). The statistical association appears in a rather complex results section and is also discussed, while the brief article abstract states: “ This large study, including 336,364 Caucasians, report breastfeeding to be associated with increased odds of being diagnosed with hay fever and eczema during life, while breastfeeding is found not to be significantly associated with asthma .”(Ek et al, ). The last sentence made the headlines earlier this week, including in my morning newspaper, and the rather slanted newspaper coverage incited me to appraise the article.…”