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Toddlers who share bed with their parents may be at greater risk for asthma

Parents who share their bed with their children may be putting them at an increased risk for developing asthma later in life, according to researchers.

“The current study shows that there is an association between toddlers who share a bed with their parents at the age of 2 years and wheezing and asthma in later childhood,” Maartje Luijk, MD, Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, said in a press release.

The prospective study included 6,160 mothers and their children in the Netherlands.

The mothers were asked to fill out questionnaires answering yes or no to questions pertaining to their child’s asthma.

Each child included in the report was assessed at least twice and response rates for the questionnaires ranged from 71 percent to 76 percent.

Researchers assessed children who shared their bed with their parents or who slept alone at ages 2 and 24 months, wheezing between 1 and 6 years and asthma at 6 years.
The researchers indicated that the children who shared a bed with their parents did not have increased odds of wheezing from 1-to-6 years old (OR=0.98, 95% CI, 0.89-1.08). However, children who shared a bed with their parents at 24 months had increased odds of wheezing between the ages of 3 and 6 (OR=1.42, 95% CI, 1.15-1.74).

Doctors were more likely to diagnose children with asthma who shared beds with parents at 24 months (OR=1.57, 95% CI, 1.03-2.38).

Researchers did indicate that constant contact between a mother and child during the first months of life, regardless of bed-sharing, added to the complexity of the associations in the study.

Demographic and environmental factors must also be taken into account when determining the correlation between asthma and bed-sharing, the research indicated.

“More research is needed to identify the factors that may impact on the development of asthma through bed sharing,” Luijk said in the press release.

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.