During pregnancy, women undergo a number of physical and emotional changes, which increase their risk of depression.
Babies whose mothers have suffered from depression and anxiety during pregnancy have a higher risk of asthma in childhood.
This was revealed in a new medical study.
The study asked parents of more than 4,000 children about stress during the second trimester of pregnancy and then 3 years later.
These questionnaires were also filled out from mothers within 2 to 6 months of the baby’s birth.
The study, published in the medical journal Thorax, found that 362 women and 167 men had significant psychological problems during maternal pregnancy.
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Researchers have found that maternal depression and anxiety during pregnancy are linked to poor lung function and a diagnosis of asthma.
Research has shown that psychological problems during pregnancy affect the baby’s lung function, but no link has been found between mental health problems in parents after birth and the risk of asthma in children.
The results suggest that this mechanism may be in the mother’s womb.
The researchers said that the findings suggest that the mother’s mental distress during pregnancy affects the lung function of children up to the age of 10 and the risk of asthma.
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“Of course this is just one of the many causes of asthma, but we discovered that the effect is transmitted only from mothers to children,” said Dr. Evelyn R. van Mail, who conducted the study at the University of Erasmus in the Netherlands. There are indications that something happens in the abdomen, but this was observational research and we cannot say definitively about its effects.