Asthma, Rhinitis, Other Respiratory DiseasesMaternal vaginal microflora during pregnancy and the risk of asthma hospitalization and use of antiasthma medication in early childhood☆,☆☆
Section snippets
Subjects
The present study is based on a previously conducted study of risk factors for preterm delivery. Pregnant women attending prenatal care at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Odense University Hospital, Denmark, were invited to participate in that study at their first antenatal care visit between 8 and 24 full gestational weeks (mean of 17 full gestational weeks plus 1 day, SD 2 weeks plus 4 days) during the study period from November 1992 to February 1994. The inclusion criteria were
Clinical outcomes
Fifty-one (1.7%) of the 3003 children were hospitalized for asthma during the first 3 years of life, and 93 (3.4%) of the 2742 children who still lived in the county in 2000 used 3 or more packages of antiasthma medication between 4 and 5 years of age. Nine (20%) of the 46 children with a history of hospitalization still living in the county in 2000 used antiasthma medication.
The potential confounders-single motherhood, number of other children in the home, and season of birth-were not
Discussion
As hypothesized a priori, we found that maternal colonization with U urealyticum in pregnancy was a risk factor for infant wheezing. Maternal colonization with staphylococci and use of antibiotics in pregnancy were risk factors for asthma during the fifth year of life.
U urealyticum is a sexually transmitted human pathogen that can be found in the cervix or vagina of 40% to 80% of asymptomatic women of reproductive ages. Colonization is linked to young age, low socioeconomic status, and multiple
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Cited by (0)
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Supported by grants from The Danish Medical Research Council (9700560). The original study was supported by the Danish National Research Foundation and a grant from March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation (#20-FY98-700), New York, and supported under a cooperative agreement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga, through the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine, Washington, DC. The activities of The Danish Epidemiology Science Centre are financed by a grant from The Danish National Research Foundation.
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Reprint requests: Christine Stabell Benn, MD, Department of Epidemiology Research, Statens Serum Institut, 5 Artillerivej, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark.