Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: The potentially fatal effects of maternal smoking on infants have been recognised since the 1800s 1. In the latter half of the 1900s, the link between maternal smoking and the increased rate of lower respiratory infection (LRI) in early life was described 2. Given the high rates of smoking in many societies 3, the burden of the increase in LRI is substantial. In a meta-analysis of relationships between parental smoking and respiratory disease, Li et al. 4 calculated that the odds ratio (OR) for hospitalisation of LRI in infancy or early childhood for those exposed to parental environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) compared with those not exposed was 1.93 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.66–2.25). The risk was age related, as the ORs of prevalence of serious LRI were 1.71 (95% CI 1.33–2.20) and 1.25 (95% CI 0.88–1.78) for children aged 0–2 and 3–6 yrs, respectively. Li et al. 4 concluded that the results of community and hospital studies were broadly consistent, and showed that the child of a parent who smokes is at approximately twice the risk of having a serious respiratory tract infection requiring hospitalisation in early life. Indeed, early respiratory infection is not only a major cause of morbidity in developed countries, but, in developing countries, respiratory infection is also the leading cause of death in children 5.
There have been a large number of studies showing the relationships between maternal smoking and impaired lung function and increases in respiratory symptoms in infants and young children. An effect of maternal smoking on neonatal lung function has been demonstrated in a study …
Source: European Respiratory Journal
Author: P. N. Le Souëf
Institution: The University of Western Australia
Language: English
Subfield: Physiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2152629988