Children whose mothers are chronically stressed during their early years may have a higher asthma rate than their peers, regardless of income or gender according to a Manitoba study by Drs. Allan Becker and Anita Kozyrskyj. Dr. Becker, a researcher at the Manitoba Institute of Child Health, the research division of the Children’s Hospital Foundation says, “Evidence is emerging that exposure to maternal distress in early life may play a causal role in the development of childhood asthma.” Dr. Becker, who is working on the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) study also adds, “It is becoming increasingly clear that traditional environmental risk factors may not fully explain the origins of asthma.”

The prevalence of asthma in Canada has been increasing over the past thirty years and currently over 3 million Canadians have been diagnosed with asthma. Here in Manitoba, approximately 13.9% of children, aged 5 to 19 years of age, are coping with this chronic respiratory illness.

Initiated in 2008, the six-year CHILD study has so far recruited 50 pregnant mothers in Winnipeg to investigate the role of environmental exposures, infections, nutrition and genetics in the development of asthma and allergies. This birth cohort study, partly funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research and AllerGen, the Allergy, Genes and Environmental research network (AllerGen NCE), is currently recruiting another 1,000 pregnant mothers in Winnipeg to further investigate environmental triggers as well as possible links between childhood asthma and risk factors such as maternal stress.

The mechanisms for how maternal distress causes asthma are not well understood. However, depressed mothers are more likely to smoke and less likely to breast feed which are associated with the development of asthma. The CHILD study will focus on checking a child’s health several times over their first few years of life. Researchers will record the pregnancy and delivery details and request a cord blood sample (which is normally discarded) for genetic and immune testing. The child’s home will be visited and studied as well. This information will help researchers understand why early allergen sensitization is a dominant risk factor for childhood asthma that persists into adult life, and why the loss of lung function appears to be established very early in childhood.

The Manitoba Institute of Child Health is the research division of The Children’s Hospital Foundation of Manitoba. The Institute is dedicated to excellence in pediatric research. At the Institute, more than 220 world-class pediatric medical researchers, technical staff, students and support staff are involved in over $8 million of research and clinical trial activities each year.

(Winnipeg, Manitoba – June 25, 2009)