Study: Exposure to Cats Can Reduce Childhood Asthma Rates

 Cats can lower the number of kids who get asthma.

According to new study, having a cat in the house where a baby is born can help keep the baby from getting asthma.

Danish researchers at the Copenhagen Studies on Asthma in Childhood Research Center (COPSAC) think that cats can keep kids from getting asthma.

The scientists came to the conclusion that cats stop a certain gene in our bodies from having an effect. When this gene is turned on, children are twice as likely to get cancer. They think that if there is a cat in the house when the child is born, the gene is never turned on and the chance of asthma is greatly reduced.

Hans Bisgaard is the head of COPSAC and a professor of pediatrics. He is also the study's lead author, and he says that he was surprised by the results, which showed that genes linked to diseases can be turned on or off like a light depending on the surroundings.

He says it shows how important the link is between our genes and our surroundings, especially during pregnancy and the first few years of a child's life.

The study looked at 377 Danish children whose moms had asthma. Both surveys and samples were used to map their genes and find out about their environments and upbringing. They found that children with a certain version of the gene 17q21, also called TT, were less likely to get asthma if they had a cat. This gene has the most effect on whether or not a child will get asthma, and almost one-third of the children had the TT variation gene. Whether or not their mother had asthma had nothing to do with that number.

Scientists found that children with the TT gene change were more likely to get asthma if they were around cats, but not if they were around dogs early in life. Also, they think cats helped protect against asthma and coughing because the 17q21 gene is linked to those diseases.

Because these results show that genes and the environment interact in such specific and yet unknown ways, more study needs to be done to look at the bigger picture. Because the study doesn't show exactly what it is about cats, and if it is something unique to cats, that protects children with these gene differences, the researchers want to know what kind and how much early exposure to cats would make a difference.

Co-author Jakob Stokholm thinks that something in the bacteria that cats carry or in the fungi or viruses that are only found in cats, and to which children are then subjected, could affect the immune system. Stokholm says that this could help them learn more about how to keep kids from getting asthma in the first place.