Paracetamol doubles risk of asthma in kids
By IANSTuesday, November 30, 2010
LONDON - Babies given Calpol or other forms of paracetamol are twice as likely to develop asthma.
Those fed the medicines in the first 15 months of their life are also at much higher risk of allergies when they are older.
Researchers attribute the surge in childhood asthma over the last 50 years to increasing number of parents giving their kids paracetamol for pain or fever relief, the journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy reports.
A study found that babies who had Calpol or similar medicines in the first 15 months were twice as likely to have suffered wheezing and other symptoms of asthma by the time they were six, according to the Daily Mail.
Allergies are also on the rise and since 2001 the number of children receiving treatment for some form of allergic reaction or intolerance has increased by 25 percent.
Researchers at Otago University in Wellington studied 1,500 kids up to the age of six in Christchurch, New Zealand.
They found that 95 percent of the children were given paracetamol - and were far more likely to suffer from asthma or allergies.
Said Prof Julian Crane, who led the study: “The major finding is that children who used paracetamol before the age of 15 months (90 percent) were more than three times as likely to become sensitised to allergens and twice as likely to develop symptoms of asthma at six years old than children not using paracetamol.”
