TY - JOUR T1 - Early life parental exposure to cats and dogs reduces the risk of allergic disease in their children: Possible inter-generational effect JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J VL - 44 IS - Suppl 58 SP - P1945 AU - A. Lowe AU - C. Svanes AU - A. Johannessen AU - C. Lodge AU - R.J. Bertelsen AU - J. Dratva AU - B. Forsberg AU - T. Gislason AU - B. Benedikstdottir AU - M. Holm AU - R. Jogi AU - L. Modig AU - D. Norbäck AU - E. Omenaas AU - F.G. Real AU - V. Schlûnssen AU - T. Sigsgaard AU - T.D. Skorge AU - S. Timm AU - G. Wieslander AU - C. Janson AU - S. Dharmage Y1 - 2014/09/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/44/Suppl_58/P1945.abstract N2 - Background: Environmental exposures, including pets, can induce heritable epigenetic changes, and influence disease risk in offspring. We assessed if early life parental exposure to cats and dogs influenced their children's risk of allergic disease.Methods: 7,174 Northern Europeans (born 1945-1971) who participated in the RHINE-III study in 2012, provided questionnaire based outcome data for asthma, eczema and allergic rhinitis for 16,954 of their children. Associations were estimated between parents' early life cat and dog exposure during infancy (<1 year) and childhood (1-5 years) and the children's outcomes, while adjusting for a range of potential confounders.Results: Parents' exposure to dog during childhood, was associated with a small risk reduction for the child developing asthma (adjusted OR=0.82, 95%CI=0.71-0.95), but not significantly associated with hay fever (aOR=0.95, 0.84-1.07) or eczema (aOR=1.00, 0.88-1.12). Parents' exposure to both a cat and a dog during childhood was associated with both a reduced risk of offspring hay fever (aOR=0.78, 0.63-0.95) and a reduced risk of non-atopic asthma (asthma without hayfever, aOR=0.72, 0.57-0.92) but not significantly associated with atopic asthma (asthma with hayfever, aOR=0.91, 0.67-1.25) when compared to children of parents with neither pet. Information was not available on the child's own exposure to pets in early life to determine if this was a mediating factor.Conclusions: Parental early life pet exposure is associated with a reduced risk of asthma and hay-fever in their child, but it is unclear if this is an inter-generational effect or is due to a familial pet keeping behaviour. ER -