High mother’s educational level: An associated factor for wheezing infants?

Abstract

Editor, Association between socioeconomic status and the occurrence of allergies in childhood is controversial. Higher prevalence of asthma in this age group could be associated with better lifestyle. In this respect, Dom et al., investigated the association between parents educational level, sensitization and recurrent wheezing in the first year of life of Belgian infants. They found that recurrent wheezing in infants was negatively associated with a higher maternal educational level (1). A cross-sectional study in Curitiba, Brazil (as a part of multicentre study EISL, from spanish: Estudio Internacional de Sibilancias en Lactantes) aimed to verify the prevalence, risk factors and treatment of wheezing in the first 12 months of life. The city in south of Brazil has higher income per capita and better educational public system than most cities in the country. A standardized and validated questionnaire was applied to three thousand and three parents of infants showed that 45.4% have had at least one wheezing episode and 22.6% (2.5 times the prevalence in Antwerp) have had three or more wheezing episodes (2, 3). Mothers of non-wheezing infants spent more time in school than mothers of wheezers. High educational level was a protection factor for wheezing by a bivariate analysis (PR = 0.89; CI 95% 0.80–0.98, p = 0.02) but was not an associated factor for wheezing in the first year of life analyzing data on over 50 variables by adjusted multiple regression of Poisson model (4). Table 1.