Parental anxiety link to child asthma
28 June 2005

Parents who suffer from depression or anxiety disorders are more likely to have children with asthma and other allergy-based conditions, according to a US study.

Researchers from the University of Columbia in New York studied the link between children with asthma and allergies and parents who experienced depression, general anxiety disorder and panic attacks, in a survey of over 9,000 parent and child pairs. Of the parent and child pairs, 8,686 were biological and 554 were non-biological parents.

The results showed that biological parents with major depression were 67% more likely to have a child with asthma or another allergy-based condition than those in good mental health, with an increased risk of 46% for parents who had anxiety disorders. The link was stronger in mothers than in fathers.

By contrast, adoptive parents with depression did not show higher levels of asthma in their children: experts believe this finding to be further evidence of the possibility of common genes that contribute towards the development of both asthma and anxiety disorders.

Martin Dockrell, Assistant Director of Policy & Public Affairs at Asthma UK, commented: 'Manifestly, anxiety and asthma reinforce each other, but what this study suggests is that they may also share a common cause.

'The correlation does not imply causation,' he added. 'It would be wrong to say simply that a parent's anxiety causes a child's asthma in the same way that it would be wrong to say simply that a parent's asthma causes a child's anxiety.'