Asthma, Rhinitis, Other Respiratory DiseasesMode of delivery and risk of allergic rhinitis and asthma☆,☆☆
Section snippets
Methods
The study was nested in an ongoing national cohort study of pregnant women known as the Danish National Birth Cohort .17 Pregnant women were invited to participate in the study when they visited their general practitioners for the first time during pregnancy. An extensive telephone interview was conducted with each woman during pregnancy; it included a large variety of questions, among which were questions on asthma, allergy, and occupation. A total of 10,482 women from this cohort had been
Results
Of the 9722 women in the study, 1272 (14.0%) were cases of allergic rhinitis, 1038 (11.4%) were cases of asthma ever, and 644 (6.6%) were cases of current asthma. All of the women were between 20 and 28 years old, the median age being 25 years. In all, 87.9% of the women had been delivered spontaneously, 5.1% by cesarean section, 4.2% by vacuum extraction, and 2.7% by other complicated modes of delivery.
Table I shows the risk of allergic rhinitis according to the birth characteristics mode of
Discussion
In the present study, cesarean section was not associated with an increased risk of allergic rhinitis. This finding, together with the results of previous studies,4, 11, 12, 13 gives little support to the hypothesis that a modified colonization of the microbial flora in babies delivered by cesarean section should distort the development of the immune system so as to increase the risk of atopy and allergic disease into adulthood.
As regards asthma ever, we found a positive association with
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr Carsten Obel for fruitful discussions.
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Cited by (0)
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Supported by the Danish National Research Foundation (grant no. 11) and the Danish Medical Research Council (grant no. 9700560).
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Reprint requests: Tine Westergaard, MD, PhD, Department of Epidemiology Research, Danish Epidemiology Science Centre, Statens Serum Institut, 5 Artillerivej, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark.