Parental asthma, parental eczema and asthma and eczema in early childhood

Abstract

The relationship between parental asthma, parental eczema and asthma and eczema in early childhood was studied in a birth cohort of New Zealand 4-yr-olds. Application of logistic regression and log linear modelling methods revealed the presence of a complicated system of relationships between asthma and eczema in parents and the occurrence of these conditions in early childhood. For boys, the presence of parental asthma increased the risk of early childhood asthma by nearly 2 1 2 times, whereas parental asthma was unrelated to early asthma in girls. For both sexes the presence of parental eczema increased the risks of childhood eczema. Analysis of the joint parental asthma, parental eczema, child asthma, child eczema distributions suggested that the presence of a specific component of inheritance in childhood asthma and childhood eczema so that asthma in parents was associated with asthma but not eczema in boys and eczema in parents was associated with eczema but not asthma in both sexes. However, there was an additional generalised tendency for both asthma and eczema in children to occur together. It is concluded that the widely held belief that asthma and eczema in parents are non-specifically related to the occurrence of these conditions in early childhood reflecting the presence of a general and undifferentiated familial tendency to atopic disease is, at best, an oversimplification of the complex relationships which exist between parental asthma, parental eczema and the occurrence of these conditions in early childhood.