According to a recent study, children are more likely to develop asthma if one of their parents actively smoked or absorbed secondhand smoke as youngsters. The international team of researchers also stated in the study, which was released in the European Respiratory Journal, that the ‘transgenerational effect’ is a phenomenon that describes how smoking’s effects and the respiratory issues they cause can be seen over the course of the following two generations.
The team included numerous scholars from Sri Lanka, Australia, and the United Kingdom. According to our research, children who had fathers who were not exposed to secondhand smoke as children had a 59% higher risk of developing non-allergic asthma. Jiacheng Liu from Melbourne University told The Guardian that the risk was significantly higher, at 72%, if the fathers smoked themselves after being exposed to secondhand smoking. The study’s co-author, Dr. Dinh Bui, thinks it will help spread knowledge of the negative effects of smoking and may possibly bring about ‘genuine change’.
She noted in a statement outlining the motivations for the study, ‘Our findings demonstrate how the harm caused by smoking can affect not just smokers but also their offspring and grandkids’. A significant risk factor for non-allergic asthma is exposure to maternal smoke before the age of 15 years. According to the study, smoking has been linked to a number of instances in which epigenetic alterations have been altered, making this the most plausible cause of the increased risk of asthma in subsequent generations.
Post Your Comments