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Maternal preeclampsia and childhood asthma in the offspring
Author(s) -
Liu Xiaoqin,
Olsen Jørn,
Agerbo Esben,
Yuan Wei,
Wu Chun Sen,
Li Jiong
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
pediatric allergy and immunology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.269
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1399-3038
pISSN - 0905-6157
DOI - 10.1111/pai.12344
Subject(s) - medicine , preeclampsia , asthma , confidence interval , offspring , pregnancy , sibling , odds ratio , obstetrics , hazard ratio , rate ratio , pediatrics , psychology , developmental psychology , genetics , biology
Abstract Background Preeclampsia is a possible risk factor for childhood asthma in the offspring. Our aim was to find whether preeclampsia is associated with childhood asthma. We also aimed to study whether a possible association can be explained by factors shared by siblings. Methods All eligible live singletons born in Denmark during 1993–2007 were identified (N = 923,533), and the occurrence of preeclampsia during the index pregnancy was determined. The children were followed from their 3rd birthday to the first hospitalization, outpatient contact or prescription for asthma, emigration, death, their 18th birthday, or the end of 2010, whichever came first. We carried out a nested case‐control and a case‐sibling study with density sampling to estimate incidence rate ratio ( IRR ) of asthma as a function of maternal preeclampsia, using conditional logistic regression. Results A total of 115,522 asthma cases were identified during 1996–2010. In the case‐control analysis, the overall IRR of asthma for those exposed to maternal preeclampsia was 1.19 (95% confidence interval ( CI ): 1.15, 1.24). The IRR s for asthma according to early and late onset preeclampsia were 1.88 (95% CI : 1.67, 2.11) and 1.14 (95% CI : 1.10, 1.19). In the case‐sibling analysis, the corresponding IRR s were 1.06 (95% CI : 0.98, 1.14), 1.15 (95% CI : 1.02, 1.29), and 1.02 (95% CI : 0.93, 1.11), respectively. Conclusions Early onset preeclampsia was associated with an increased risk of asthma in the offspring, but part of this association may be due to confounding by factors shared by siblings.