Grandmother's smoking habits increase asthma risk in grandchildren

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/elf-gsh092515.php

Public Release: 29-Sep-2015
Grandmother's smoking habits increase asthma risk in grandchildren
European Lung Foundation

Children with grandmothers who smoked have an increased risk of asthma even when mothers did not smoke, according to new findings.

The new study, presented today (30 September, 2015) at the European Respiratory Society's International Congress, 2015, is the first to investigate the risk in a whole population and use evidence about smoking habits taken directly from grandmothers at the time they were pregnant.

There has been a rapid increase in asthma in the last 50 years. Changing environmental exposures are thought to be responsible for this and more recently researchers are looking at these exposures in previous generations. It is known that tobacco use can affect the activity of genes and the researchers in this new study hypothesised that these changes could then be passed to subsequent generations.

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The results found that if grandmothers had smoked whilst they were pregnant, there was an increased risk of asthma in grandchildren, even if their mothers had not smoked during pregnancy. The risk of asthma was increased by 10 to 22%.

Dr Caroline Lodge, an author of the study and Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia, said: "We found that smoking in previous generations can influence the risk of asthma in subsequent generations. This may also be important in the transmission of other exposures and diseases."

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