There is increasing evidence of a link between stress and asthma development and symptom control. Studies have shown that in healthy children, parental stress is associated with an increased frequency of childhood illnesses and altered immune function, and in children with asthma, increased parental stress can be associated with altered functional status, hospitalizations for asthma, and poor asthma control. The majority of these studies have focused on maternal or “caregiver” stress (a general term, not specifying whether this is the mother, father, or another person). There is interest in learning whether a father’s stress could also be linked to the development of asthma in his children.
In an upcoming issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Lange and colleagues write about their study analyzing the relationship between parental psychosocial stress, individually in mothers and fathers, and asthma complications in their children. Their study included parents of 339 sets of twins from Puerto Rico. The parents were interviewed separately about their own psychosocial stress and about asthma in their children individually at age 1 and again about the children’s asthma at 3 years of age. Fathers were asked about symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anti-social behavior, and mothers were asked about depressive symptoms.
The authors found that indicators of paternal stress and psychiatric disorders were significantly associated with recent asthma symptoms in children at age 1. Maternal depressive symptoms were associated with children’s asthma hospitalizations at age 1, and at age 3, both asthma hospitalizations and asthma diagnosis. Examining asthma complications at 1 year and 3 years of age combined, a father’s stress appeared to be associated with a child’s recurrent oral steroid use, while a mother’s stress was associated with a child’s recurrent hospitalizations for asthma and with asthma diagnosis. Both maternal and paternal depression were associated with children’s recurrent hospitalizations for asthma. The authors suggest that parental stress, particularly depression, is an important modifiable risk for childhood asthma problems, especially in high-risk populations.
Dear Parents ,this information has been given to you in the interest of your children.
