NATION IN BRIEF : NATIONWIDE : Smoking Linked to Asthma in Babies

Women who smoke apparently are significantly more likely to have children who develop asthma, researchers reported. “Children whose mothers smoke half a pack of cigarettes or more a day are twice as likely to have asthma and are four times as likely to use asthma medications as are children whose mothers do not smoke,” researchers concluded in a study published in the journal Pediatrics. The researchers analyzed data on 4,331 children from birth to 5 years of age. Dr. Michael Weitzman, an associate professor of pediatrics and public health at Boston University, said the data the study was based on only indicated whether the women had smoked during pregnancy and not after their children were born.