Cats can lower the number of asthma cases in children.
According to new study, having a cat in the house with a newborn can help keep the child from getting asthma.
Researchers at the Copenhagen Studies on Asthma in Childhood Research Center (COPSAC) in Denmark think that cats might keep kids from getting asthma.
Scientists came to the conclusion that cats cancel out the effects of a certain gene in our bodies. When this gene is turned on, children are twice as likely to get sick. They think that if a cat is in the house when the baby is born, the gene is never turned on and the chance of asthma is greatly reduced.
Hans Bisgaard is in charge of COPSAC and is a professor of pediatrics. He is also the study's lead author, and he says that he was surprised that the study showed that genes linked to diseases can be turned on or off like a light depending on our surroundings.
He says that it shows how important the link between our genes and the surroundings is, especially during pregnancy and the first few years of a child's life.
The study looked at 377 Danish children whose moms had asthma. Both surveys and samples were used to map their genes and learn about their environments and upbringing. They found that asthma was less likely to happen in kids who had a certain version of the gene 17q21, also called TT. This gene has the biggest effect on whether or not a child will get asthma, and almost one-third of the children had the TT variation gene. Whether or not their mother had asthma had no effect on that number.
Scientists found that children with the TT gene variant were more likely to get asthma if they were around cats, but not if they were around dogs early in life. They also think that cats helped protect against asthma and coughing because the 17q21 gene is linked to those conditions.
Because these results show that genes and the environment interact so precisely and yet in ways we don't know much about, it's important to do more research to look at the wider effects. Because the study doesn't show exactly what it is about cats, or if it's just cats, that protects children with these gene differences, the researchers want to know what kind and how much exposure to cats early on would make a difference.
Co-author Jakob Stokholm thinks that something in the bacteria that cats carry or in the fungi or viruses that are only found in cats that children are then exposed to could change the immune system. Stokholm says that this could help find out more about how to keep kids from getting asthma in the first place.