Studies Find That Childhood Conditions are Linked to Adult Asthma

A chronic runny nose, taking paracetamol in infancy, and wheezing as a child are all conditions linked to the onset of adulthood asthma, a trio of studies reported Friday.

Babies who took the over-the-counter pain reliever paracetamol in the first year of life were fifty percent more likely to show symptoms of asthma by the time they were six or seven years old, according to one of the studies.

Based on data collected on more than 200,000 children in 31 countries, the study also showed an increased risk of asthma symptoms in young children who had used the medication within the previous year -- the more frequently it was taken, the higher the risk.

Rates of eczema and rhinoconjunctivitis -- inflammation of the eye due to allergies -- also increased, according to the research, led by Richard Beasley of the Medical Research Institute in New Zealand and published in the British journal The Lancet.

Beasley and his colleagues stressed that their findings did not mean that parents should stop giving the drug.

"Paracetamol remains the preferred drug to relieve pain and fever in children," they said. "But it should be reserved for children with a high fever of 38.5 degrees Celsius (101.3 degrees Fahrenheit)."

A second study, also published in The Lancet, found that the first-time onset of asthma in adults aged 20-44 was closely linked to both rhinitis -- typically a runny nose caused by inflammation -- and allergies.