%0 Journal Article
%T Cotinine versus questionnaire: early-life environmental tobacco smoke exposure and incident asthma
%A Chris Carlsten
%A Helen Dimich-Ward
%A Anne DyBuncio
%A Allan B Becker
%A Moira Chan-Yeung
%J BMC Pediatrics
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2431-12-187
%X We evaluated various measures of birth-year ETS, in association with multiple respiratory endpoints early years of life, in the novel context of a birth cohort at high risk for asthma. We administered questionnaires to parents, both at the end of pregnancy and at one year of life, and measured cotinine in cord blood (CCot; in 275 children) and in urine (UCot; obtained at 12 months in 365 children), each by radioimmunoassay. Multiple logistic regression was used to assess the association of the various metrics with recurrent wheeze at age 2 and with bronchial hyperresponsiveness (BHR) and asthma at age 7.Self-reported 3rd trimester maternal smoking was associated with significantly increased risk for recurrent wheeze at age 2 (odds ratio 3.5 [95% confidence interval = 1.2,10.7]); the risks associated with CCot and 3rd trimester smoking in any family member were similar (OR 2.9 [1.2,7.0] and 2.6 [1.0,6.5], respectively). No metric of maternal smoking at 12 months appeared to significantly influence the risk of recurrent wheeze at age 2, and no metric of ETS at any time appeared to significantly influence risk of asthma or BHR at age 7.Biomarker- and questionnaire-based assessment of ETS in early life lead to similar estimates of ETS-associated risk of recurrent wheeze and asthma.Exposures that confer risk for incident childhood asthma include early-life stressors and infections, allergens, outdoor pollutants, and tobacco smoke [1]. In our previous work [2], we focused on the lattermost and demonstrated that questionnaire-based exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) at year 7, administered to parents within a birth cohort of high-risk children, was not a risk factor for asthma at year 7. An alternative to questionnaire-based data is to examine cotinine as a direct metric of exposure. A recent comprehensive meta-analysis [3], which included studies of older children, converted cotinine measures to approximate cigarette dose as an alternative to comparing the effe
%K Children
%K Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke
%K Bronchial hyperresponsiveness
%K Wheeze
%K Asthma
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2431/12/187