Asthma concern for teenage children of overweight mothers

MOTHERS who are overweight or obese when they become pregnant may be more likely to have children who go on to develop asthma-like respiratory symptoms as teenagers.

Asthma has risen worlwide since the 1970s and is now one of the most common health problems in childhood, affecting up to 37 per cent of teenagers.

Now a Finnish study suggests that being overweight while pregnant may increase the risk of having a child with asthma by between 20 and 30 per cent. The research, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, compared the respitarory health of 7,000 young people aged 15 and 16 born in Northern Finland.

One in ten wheezed, one in five had experienced wheeziness, 6 per cent had asthma and one in ten had asthma on occasion.

Teenagers whose mothers had been seriously overweight or obese before they became pregnant were between 20 per cent and 30 per cent more likely to wheeze, have wheezed or have asthma currently or previously, according to the research.

CLAIRE SMITH