School air quality related to dry cough, rhinitis and nasal patency in children

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Investigating the association between obesity and asthma in 6- to 8-year-old Saudi children:a matched case-control study

Background: Previous studies have demonstrated an association between obesity and asthma, but there remains considerable uncertainty about whether this reflects an underlying causal relationship. Aims: To investigate the association between obesity and asthma in pre-pubertal children and to investigate the roles of airway obstruction and atopy as possible causal mechanisms. Methods: We conducted an age- and sex-matched case–control study of 1,264 6- to 8-year-old schoolchildren with and without asthma recruited from 37 randomly selected schools in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. The body mass index (BMI), waist circumference and skin fold thickness of the 632 children with asthma were compared with those of the 632 control children without asthma. Associations between obesity and asthma, adjusted for other potential risk factors, were assessed separately in boys and girls using conditional logistic regression analysis. The possible mediating roles of atopy and airway obstruction were studied by investigating the impact of incorporating data on sensitisation to common aeroallergens and measurements of lung function. Results: BMI was associated with asthma in boys (odds ratio (OR)=1.14, 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.08–1.20; adjusted OR=1.11, 95% CI, 1.03–1.19) and girls (OR=1.37, 95% CI, 1.26–1.50; adjusted OR=1.38, 95% CI, 1.23–1.56). Adjusting for forced expiratory volume in 1 s had a negligible impact on these associations, but these were attenuated following adjustment for allergic sensitisation, particularly in girls (girls: OR=1.25; 95% CI, 0.96–1.60; boys: OR=1.09, 95% CI, 0.99–1.19). Conclusions: BMI is associated with asthma in pre-pubertal Saudi boys and girls; this effect does not appear to be mediated through respiratory obstruction, but in girls this may at least partially be mediated through increased risk of allergic sensitisation

Daycare attendance and risk of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

The relationship between daycare/preschool (‘daycare’) attendance and the risk of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia was evaluated in the Northern California Childhood Leukaemia Study. Incident cases (age 1–14 years) were rapidly ascertained during 1995–1999. Population-based controls were randomly selected from the California birth registry, individually matched on date of birth, gender, race, Hispanicity, and residence, resulting in a total of 140 case–controls pairs. Fewer cases (n=92, 66%) attended daycare than controls (n=103, 74%). Children who had more total child–hours had a significantly reduced risk of ALL. The odds ratio associated with each thousand child–hours was 0.991 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.984–0.999), which means that a child with 50 thousand child–hours (who may have, for example, attended a daycare with 15 other children, 25 h per week, for a total duration of 30.65 months) would have an odds ratio of (0.991)50=0.64 (95% CI: 0.45, 0.95), compared to children who never attended daycare. Besides, controls started daycare at a younger age, attended daycare for longer duration, remained in daycare for more hours, and were exposed to more children at each daycare. These findings support the hypothesis that delayed exposure to common infections plays an important role in the aetiology of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, and suggest that extensive contact with other children in a daycare setting is associated with a reduced risk of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Increasing body mass index from age 5 to 14 years predicts asthma among adolescents: evidence from a birth cohort study

Background:Obesity and asthma are common disorders, and the prevalence of both has increased in recent decades. It has been suggested that increases in the prevalence of obesity might in part explain the increase in asthma prevalence. This study aims to examine the prospective association between change in body mass index (BMI) z-score between ages 5 and 14 years and asthma symptoms at 14 years. Methods:Data was taken from the Mater University Study of Pregnancy and its outcomes (MUSP), a birth cohort of 7223 mothers and children started in Brisbane (Australia) in 1981. BMI was measured at age 5 and 14 years. Asthma was assessed from maternal reports of symptoms at age 5 and 14 years. In this study analyses were conducted on 2911 participants who had information on BMI and asthma at both ages. Results: BMI z-score at age 14 and the change in BMI z-score from age 5 to 14–years were positively associated with asthma symptoms at age 14 years, whereas BMI z-score at age 5 was not associated with asthma at age 14. Adjustment for a range of early-life exposures did not substantially alter these findings. The association between change in BMI z-score with asthma symptoms at 14 years appeared stronger for male subjects compared with female subjects but there was no statistical evidence for a sex difference (P=0.36). Conclusions: Increase in BMI z-score between age 5 and 14 years is associated with increased risk of asthma symptoms in adolescence

Maternal alcohol consumption and offspring DNA methylation: Findings from six general population-based birth cohorts

Aim: Alcohol consumption during pregnancy is sometimes associated with adverse outcomes in offspring, potentially mediated by epigenetic modifications. We aimed to investigate genome-wide DNA methylation in cord blood of newborns exposed to alcohol in utero. Materials & methods: We meta-analyzed information from six population-based birth cohorts within the Pregnancy and Childhood Epigenetics consortium. Results: We found no strong evidence of association at either individual CpGs or across larger regions of the genome. Conclusion: Our findings suggest no association between maternal alcohol consumption and offspring cord blood DNA methylation. This is in stark contrast to the multiple strong associations previous studies have found for maternal smoking, which is similarly socially patterned. However, it is possible that a combination of a larger sample size, higher doses, different timings of exposure, exploration of a different tissue and a more global assessment of genomic DNA methylation might show evidence of association

Neonatal Genome-Wide Methylation Patterns in Relation to Birth Weight in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort

Although epigenetic regulation plays a critical role in embryonic development, few studies have examined the relationship of epigenome-wide methylation with fetal growth. Using the Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip (Illumina, Inc., San Diego, California) in a substudy of 1,046 infants from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) enrolled between 1999 and 2008, we examined epigenome-wide cord blood DNA methylation in relation to birth weight. In multivariable-adjusted robust linear regression models, we identified differential methylation at 19 cytosine-guanine dinucleotides (CpGs) associated with either decreased (AT-rich interactive domain 5B (MRF1-like) (ARID5B), 2 CpGs) or increased (x-ray repair complementing defective repair in Chinese hamster cells 3 (XRCC3), 4 CpGs) birth weight. ARID5B knockout mice have less adipose tissue and significantly lower weight in the postnatal period. XRCC3 plays a key role in the maintenance of chromosome stability and the repair of DNA damage. Although there are fewer data on the other implicated genes, many of these genes have been shown to have roles in developmental processes. This constitutes the largest and most robust study of birth weight using an epigenome-wide methylation platform and offers potential insights into epigenetic mechanisms of fetal growth

Maternal history of miscarriages and measures of fertility in relation to childhood asthma

Background: it remains unclear what underlies the greater risk of asthma reported among children conceived by assisted reproductive technologies (art). Objective: Our aim was to clarify the role of parental subfertility and unmeasured confounding on the association between art and childhood asthma, and to examine the possibility for common mechanisms underlying parental subfertility and miscarriages influencing asthma pathogenesis. Methods: We used data from national norwegian health registries (n=474 402) and the norwegian Mother and child cohort Study (MoBa) (n=75 797). We used log-linear regression to estimate overall associations, and fixed-effects logistic regression to estimate associations within siblings. Results: ART offspring had greater asthma risk, the adjusted relative risk (arr) was 1.20 (95% ci 1.09 to 1.32) in the registry-based cohort, and 1.42 (95% ci 1.14 to 1.76) in MoBa. the sibling analysis yielded similar associations, although the ci included the null value. the elevated asthma risk among art offspring was attenuated when they were compared with spontaneously conceived offspring with time to conception >12 months, arr 1.22 (95% ci 0.95 to 1.57). asthma risk also increased with maternal history of early miscarriages (≤12 weeks), with an arr of 1.07 (95% ci 1.03 to 1.11) for one, arr 1.18 (95% ci 1.10 to 1.26) for two and arr 1.24 (95% ci 1.12 to 1.37) for three or more. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that both parental subfertility and characteristics related to the art procedure itself might increase offspring asthma risk, although this needs to be confirmed in future studies, and further suggest that common mechanisms underlying parental subfertility and recurrent miscarriages might influence offspring asthma pathogenesis