Asthma affects thousands of children all over the country, and any parent who has experience with the condition will surely agree that it can be quite a distressing condition. This is why new research this week has left us very hopeful.
According to a new study, taking vitamin D supplements during pregnancy could very well reduce your child’s risk of developing asthma during childhood.
The research was carried out by a team at King’s College London. The team assembled a group of women who were each between 10 and 18 weeks pregnant, and assigned them at random to take two different dosages of vitamin D supplement.
The first group were given the recommended 400 IU per day, while the second group were given a significantly higher dosage of 4,400 IU per day – both, during their second and third trimesters.
Once the babies were born, the researchers took blood samples from the umbilical cords of 51 of their subjects. They then analysed the impact of the different vitamin D dosages on the babies’ immune systems.
The results were fascinating. The blood samples of the women who had taken the higher vitamin D supplement had a higher response to ‘the mimics of pathogen stimulation’ – and these responses are believed to improve the neonatal defence to infection.
This kind of strong immune response in early life has previously been linked to a lower risk of asthma – leading the researchers to believe that a higher dose of vitamin D during pregnancy could protect babies against asthma during childhood.
The results were published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, where lead author Professor Catherine Hawrylowicz explained her team’s conclusions.
“The majority of all asthma cases are diagnosed in early childhood, implying that the origin of the disease stems in foetal and early life,” she wrote.
She added that this study is the first of its kind: “For the first time, we have shown that higher vitamin D levels in pregnancy can effectively alter the immune response of the newborn baby, which could help to protect the child from developing asthma.”
Further research is due to be carried out, to test the long-term impact of the process.
