India, June 13 -- Asthma is the leading chronic illness among children and remains a major reason for pediatric hospital admissions worldwide.
Childhood Asthma Rates Vary Widely Across the World
According to the Global Asthma Network, approximately 9.1% of children and 11.0% of adolescents are affected by asthma globally, although prevalence rates differ significantly across countries, regions, and living environments.
The highest rates of childhood asthma-exceeding 20%-have been reported in the British Isles, as well as parts of Oceania and the Middle East. Several factors are known to increase the risk of developing asthma, including exposure to air pollution, tobacco smoke, viral infections during childhood, obesity, and allergic conditions such as eczema and hay fever.
Many people with asthma believe that exposure to pet dander, particularly from cats, can trigger asthma symptoms or attacks. However, scientific evidence on this relationship has remained inconclusive, with previous studies often limited by small sample sizes and narrow population groups.
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Anti asthma diet includes natural, non-drug bronchodilator that dilates the bronchi and relaxes lung muscles. Magnesium, herbs and coffee help fight asthma.
Cat Exposure and Childhood Asthma: What New Research Reveals
A recent study published in Frontiers in Allergy provides new insights, suggesting that living with cats may not negatively affect children who have asthma and allergies, challenging common assumptions about pet exposure and asthma outcomes. ()
"Here we show in a nationwide cohort of children in Sweden with asthma and allergies, that children living with a cat had similar asthma severity, exacerbation, asthma control, and lung function to children living without cats in the short term," said corresponding author Dr Resthie R Putri, a postdoctoral fellow at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
"We also did not see any differences in asthma outcomes related to the number of cats, the cat's sex, or the cat's age."
In 2023, Putri and colleagues began a study on a cohort of 30,277 children - between four and 17 years old at the time - born between 2006 and 2020 and diagnosed with asthma or an airway allergy. They followed these over 24 months until 2024 to track asthma outcomes, drawing records on diagnoses, emergency visits, prescribed medications, and asthma control test and spirometry tests from linked data in the Swedish National Patient Register, Prescribed Drug Register, and National Airway Register.
In Sweden, registration in the National Cat Register has been mandatory since 2023 for all pet cats born after 2008. For each child, the authors noted whether the parental household had at least one cat in 2023, as was true for 9.4% of the children.
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Quiz on AsthmaQuiz on Asthma
Introduction: Asthma is a chronic condition in which the airways become narrow and swollen and may produce extra mucus. This can lead to breathing difficulties and trigger coughing. Asthma can be mild sometimes, which ...
No Significant Differences in Asthma Outcomes Among Cat-Exposed Children
The results showed that there was no significant association between exposure to pet cats and asthma outcomes. For example, moderate-to-severe asthma - based on prescribed asthma medications - occurred in 9.6% of the cat-exposed children and 10.1% of the non-exposed children. Asthma 'exacerbation' (also known as an attack or flare-up) occurred in 3.3% of the cat-exposed children and 3.5% of the non-exposed children.
Among a subset of 1,428 children for whom asthma control and lung spirometry data were available, 97 (6.8%) lived with cats. There were no significant differences between the two groups in two common measures of lung function.
"One possible explanation is that cat allergen exposure is very common, even outside the home. Children who do not have cats at home may still be exposed in shared environments such as schools or public transportation, which could explain why we didn't see a difference," said Putri.
"While these large-scale findings provide valuable insight, we lacked data on which allergens the children were sensitized to, and because the National Cat Register is relatively new, some children living with cats may have been misclassified as unexposed," she cautioned.