To assess the connection between childhood asthma, sodas and other
sugar-sweetened beverages, researchers examined data about eating
habits from about 1,000 mother-child pairs as well as information on
kids’ health, including whether they had an asthma diagnosis by ages
7 to 9.
After accounting for maternal obesity and other factors that can
also influence kids’ odds of developing asthma, researchers found
that women who consumed the most soda and sugary beverages during
pregnancy were 70 percent more likely to have a child diagnosed with
asthma by mid-childhood than mothers who never or rarely had sodas
during pregnancy.
Women who had the most total fructose during pregnancy were 58
percent more likely to have kids with asthma than women who had
little to no fructose.
“Previous studies have linked intake of sugary beverages with
obesity, and obesity with asthma,” said study co-author Sheryl
Rifas-Shiman, a researcher at Harvard Medical School and Harvard
Pilgrim Health Care Institute in Boston.
“In addition to influencing asthma through increasing the risk of
obesity, we found that sugary beverages and high fructose may
influence the risk of asthma not entirely through obesity,”
Rifas-Shiman said by email. “This finding suggests that there are
additional mechanisms by which sugary beverages and fructose
influence asthma risk beyond their effects on obesity.”
What kids ate and drank also mattered. Even after accounting for
prenatal exposure to sodas, kids who had the most total fructose in
their diets earlier in childhood were 79 percent more likely to
develop asthma than children who rarely or never had fructose.
Once researchers also factored in whether children were overweight
or obese, kids with the highest fructose consumption were still 77
percent more likely to have asthma.
Mothers who consumed more sugary beverages tended to be heavier and
have less income and education than women who generally avoided
sodas and sweet drinks. But the connection between sodas, sugary
drinks and childhood asthma persisted even after accounting for
these factors.
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“We don’t know for certain the exact pathways by which sugary
beverages and fructose lead to asthma,” Rifas-Shiman said. “We
believe at least in part they act by increasing inflammation, which
may influence the child’s lung development.”
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether
or how sodas or sugary drinks might cause asthma.
Another limitation is that researchers relied on women to accurately
recall and report on soda consumption for themselves and their young
children, which may not always be accurate, researchers note in the
Annals of the American Thoracic Society.
Even so, the findings add to the evidence that women should avoid
sodas and sugary foods and drinks during pregnancy and also limit
these things for their young kids, said Dr. Leda Chatzi, a
researcher at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of
Southern California in Los Angeles who wasn’t involved in the study.
“Pregnant women should stay away from sugar sweetened drinks and
foods with added sugars,” Chatzi said by email.
“Healthy eating during pregnancy is critical to their baby's growth
and development of chronic diseases such as asthma later in life,”
Chatzi added. “A healthy dietary pattern during pregnancy contains a
variety of food groups, including fruits and vegetables, breads and
grains, protein sources and dairy products.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2BaEVOI Annals of the American Thoracic
Society, online December 8, 2017.
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