Healthnotes Newswire (September 28, 2000)—Women who smoke during and after pregnancy increase the risk of their children having problems with wheezing and colic during infancy, according to two studies published in next month’s Archives of Diseases in Childhood.

The first study looked at whether maternal smoking during pregnancy is a risk factor for wheezing in early childhood, independent of the child’s environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure.¹ A total of 8,561 mothers and infants participated in this preliminary study. The likelihood of a child developing a wheeze between the ages of 18 and 30 months was significantly higher if the child’s mother smoked while pregnant, regardless of that child’s postnatal exposure to tobacco smoke. Light smoking in the third trimester of pregnancy apparently carried the same risk as heavy smoking.

A second study, published in the same issue, discovered a link between maternal smoking and infantile colic.² The researchers assessed 3,345 children aged one to six months. Infants of smoking mothers were twice as likely to have colic as infants of nonsmoking mothers. If the smoking mother breastfed her infant, the increase in risk was slightly reduced.

Smoking is extremely damaging to the health of both a fetus and an infant. Exposure to smoke (including secondhand smoke) leads to low birth weights and increases the risk of premature delivery, fetal death, childhood cancers and allergies, infantile seizures caused by fever, birth defects of the urinary tract, and lower IQ. Now, wheeze may be added to the list.

Parents with young children in the house should not allow smoking indoors. The effects of ETS on respiratory health in young children have been studied extensively. Approximately 38% of children are exposed to ETS in the home, whereas 23.8% are exposed to maternal smoking during pregnancy. ETS exposure increases chronic bronchitis and wheezing among children two months to two years old and asthma among children two months to five years old. Among children two months to two years of age, 40 to 60% of the cases of asthma, chronic bronchitis, and wheezing can be linked to ETS exposure.³

ETS exposure is common among children in the United States. Combined with the new study extending risk to the developing fetus, this evidence should compel parents to kick the habit.