Pollen Exposure During Pregnancy Affects Child's Risk of Early Asthma, Umea University Study

A woman's exposure to high pollen levels in late pregnancy increases the risk of early asthma in the child, according to a group of researchers at Sweden's Umeå University in a recent study. A number of studies have previously shown that there is an association with being born during a pollen season and an increased risk of allergies. Although the pollen season is a regular annual event, there are large variations between years in pollen levels. Few studies have closely examined the significance of actual pollen content in different time periods before and after birth, but now, researchers at the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Umeå University have conducted such a study involving 110,000 pregnancies in the Stockholm area.