Can prenatal maternal stress increase the risk of asthma?

Maternal prenatal stress and child atopic dermatitis up to age 2 years: The Ulm SPATZ health study

“…As AD is hereditary, older sibling's AD may cause maternal stress that is unassociated with AD in the child being analyzed, as proposed for asthma . Our results of the subgroups rather suggest a higher risk of child AD symptoms given maternal depressive symptoms in families with siblings not yet affected by atopic diseases than in other families.…”

“…Furthermore, questionnaire‐based self‐reports of AD symptoms and of diagnoses made in clinical examinations may diverge . Parent‐reported diagnoses of AD and stress might be influenced by unmeasured factors such as heritable personality traits as suggested for the association between anxiety and subjectively but not objectively measured asthma . We do not have data on maternal personality to prove this hypothesis.…”

Mechanisms of organophosphorus pesticide toxicity in the context of airway hyperreactivity and asthma

“…Asthma prevalence and severity have increased markedly over the past two decades, especially in urban settings (25,57,100,218). Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain the increased susceptibility of urban residents to asthma, including exposure to allergens, air pollution, differences in health care, and stress (57,64,89,102,125,128). An environmental factor associated with occupational asthma in agriculture (105, 109, 111-113, 115, 155, 248) that is beginning to receive increased attention in the context of urban asthma (107,156,249) is exposure to organophosphorus pesticides (OPs).…”

War-time asthma: lessons from Syria

“…For example, how such physical and psychological stress influence to course of asthma on the long run remain to be analyzed. As it was shown that prenatal stress may to promote the development of asthma in the child to be born, the prevalence of asthma in children born during or shortly after the war or following migration to other countries should be studied (12).…”