A warning to all pregnant women: stay out of traffic.
A new study says traffic fumes will actually reprogram the DNA of an otherwise healthy fetus, paving the way for the child to be born asthmatic.
Scared? Me too. We've long known that pollution = bad for your health, and for pregnant women there's always that extra fear that what harms her harms her baby as well. But the idea of DNA being reprogrammed whilst inside the body runs a bit too close to science fiction for my tastes.
Expect it's not . . . fiction that is. The study at the Center for Environmental Genetics at the University of Cincinnati homed in on the ACSL3 gene, which other studies have shown is involved in the structure of cell membranes. Looking at the cord blood of fifty-three kids (a very small study, I'll admit), the BBC News has reported that scientists found "a significant association between chemical changes which control
activation of the gene and high levels of maternal PAH exposure."
Curiously, the kids themselves were reportedly showing signs of asthma by age five, not at birth. As an asthmatic myself, I know that asthma in kids is still mystifying medical experts because a child can show signs at a very young age, only to have them disappear for a time and then show up again when they're teenagers (a major bone of contention between pediatricians and parents over whether it's appropriate to continue treatment when a child isn't showing symptoms). It manifests itself in different ways from person to person - with some kids highly affected by the cold, others by the warmth. Some people have symptoms brought on by stress, others by environmental factors. Pollution itself reportedly causes at least two-thirds of asthmatic events - which would seem to support this study.
So why is this good news? Because if a mother knows she's been subjected to traffic fumes, and doctors can test her child for the malformed gene, treatment can start early - before kids show symptoms.
The only question I have - will they be willing to listen?
Image: BBC NEWS
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