PREGNANT mothers who eat healthily are less likely to have children with asthma, according to two new Scottish studies.
Researchers have unveiled new evidence that children are at greater risk of the condition if their mothers' diet is short of vitamins D and E.
They found the lining of babies' airways was different from birth if their mother's food intake lacked these key nutrients.
The researchers, at Aberdeen University, also found children were more likely to have asthma at the age of 10 if their mother ate less vitamins D and E when they were pregnant with them.
Dr Steve Turner, a senior lecturer at the university and one of the experts behind the research, said: "Mums when they are pregnant can worry for so many different reasons. They are advised to do a lot of different things. But this shows if they do change their diet, this does have a very real chance of improving the health of their child."
The research, published in the European Respiratory Journal and the publication Clinical & Experimental Allergy, examines a hypothesis put forward by an emeritus professor in Aberdeen Anthony Seaton more than 20 years ago. He proposed that changing diet was important to the increasing number of asthma cases in the UK at that time.
A group of children known as the SEATON cohort were followed up to discover that the asthma symptoms recorded by earlier studies had persisted through to the age of 10.
Professor Graham Devereux, an expert in respiratory medicine Aberdeen University, said: “The importance of the ten year findings is that asthma symptoms often go away during childhood but the link with maternal diet which we saw in five year olds is still present at age ten, so the link is persistent.”
For the other study, the researchers measured mothers’ vitamin E levels when they were 10 weeks pregnant by taking blood samples and measured vitamin D intake via a dietary assessment questionnaire.
After their children were born, they took small swabs of cells from the inside of the babies’ noses and grew them in the laboratory.
Dr Turner said: “It’s impossible to say if a one-day-old baby has asthma or not but we understand how the cells of people with established asthma behave in a laboratory setting. In this case the newborn children whose mothers had the better diet seemed to behave less like an asthmatic airway."
Vitamin E is found in a variety of healthy foods such as green vegetables, nuts, grains and seeds and is thought to be an important growth factor for airway cells.
Vitamin D is primarily gained from exposure to sunlight, though small amounts are found in fatty fish, egg yolks, some types of mushroom and beef liver. It is considered to be an important factor in the development of the immune system.
Dr Turner stressed as diet is so closely linked to other lifestyle factors, there could be a number of other issues affecting the children's asthma. A proper trial where the researchers ensure mothers eat the right nutrients is planned.
Dr Samantha Walker, director of research and policy for Asthma UK, said: “Due to years of underfunding for research, asthma remains a relative mystery and so it’s very exciting to discover new avenues for investigation."
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