Being born by Caesarean section more than doubles the risk of a young child developing asthma, doctors in the North have found.
Dr Calum McLeod, consultant paediatrician at the Antrim Hospital, Antrim, said he and his colleagues had been struck by the apparent link between the doubling of Caesarean births in Northern Ireland over the past 20 years and a doubling in the incidence of asthma.
"The incidence of asthma is considerably higher in the developed world, the same part of the world where Caesarean section rates are highest," he said.
Doctors at Antrim Hospital identified all full-term babies born there by Caesarean in 1996.
"In all, 330 babies were identified and were matched with the same number of full-term babies born by normal vaginal delivery at the hospital during the same period," Dr McLeod told the European Respiratory Conference in Glasgow yesterday.
The babies were followed up for a seven-year period and hospital records were examined to see whether any of the 660 babies were admitted to the hospital for a range of breathing problems.
The authors found that being born by Caesarean section more than doubled the risk of being admitted to hospital with asthma.
"Our results are highly significant and there is a need for a further exploration of this link," the conference heard.
In separate research, doctors in Aberdeen looked at whether taking vitamin E during pregnancy reduced a child's risk of asthma and allergic disease.
In a study of 2,000 women, Dr Sheelagh Martindale and her colleagues at the University of Aberdeen found a link between high maternal vitamin E intake and reduced wheezing in children during their second year of life.
Children of mothers with a history of allergy who had a high intake of vitamin E were 60 per cent less likely to have eczema compared with children whose mothers had a diet low in vitamin E.