Parental Stress and Child Asthma

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than nine percent of children suffer from asthma in the U.S.

Now, a study from the University of Southern California says increased parental stress levels could raise the risk childrens' risk of suffering from the respiratory disease.

USC researchers looked at 2,500 kids ages 5 to 9 for three years and found that none had asthma at the beginning of the study, Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton told Early Show co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez.

"Those who lived in an environment with both pollution and stress were 50 percent more likely to develop the disease than those just who were exposed to pollution. So, this was interesting," Ashton said.

Although it's known that living around pollution can aggravate asthma, stress may become another common thread.

"They couldn't ask a 5 year old, maybe, about the stress, so they asked the parents and then extrapolated that to what was going on in the household. We know stress has a powerful effect on our immune system," Ashton pointed out. "It can actually surpress the immune system and lead to cellular inflammation. So, while the study didn't show cause and effect, it makes sense from a physiological point of view."

Pollution can be hard to control, but parents can take charge of their stress levels.

"While people might not necessarily be able to move their home away from a pollution environment, you can try to impact the stress level in your home and know as a parent that, if you are undergoing stress, most likely your children will detect some of it. So, you want to develop better coping mechanisms for stress, because it affects all of us."

When combined, both pollution and stress make for an effective formula for asthma.

"We know a lot of things cause asthma. There's a family history and there's infection involved. But now, pollution and stress together work more synergistically or more powerfully together than they do alone," Ashton said.