Severe Asthma in Adolescents May Increase Risk of Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia

Adolescents whose asthma required hospitalization may be at a greater risk of developing bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, according to areport inSchizophrenia Bulletin. The cohort study of more than 2 million Swedish children and their parents also revealed an association between asthma in the mothers and/or fathers and bipolar disorder in the children.“As far as we are aware, this is the first study to find increased risk of bipolar disorder in children of individuals with asthma,” wrote Joseph Hayes, M.D., of University College London and colleagues. “Asthma admissions before aged 11 do not appear to be linked to bipolar or schizophrenia s pectrum disorders.”Hayes and colleagues collected data from Swedish registers from 1973 through 2011. These registers contain sociodemographic and medical information on each resident of Sweden, and parents can be linked to children via a unique identifier. The researchers included all children born in Sweden from 1973 to 1995 and their parents in the study cohort.Children were grouped according to the age of first inpatient admission for asthma: at 5 years of age or younger, 6 to 10 years of age, and 11 to 15 years of age. Hospital admissions of the mothers and fathers for asthma prior to the birth of the children were also recorded.Of the more than 2 million individuals born in Sweden between 1973 and 1995, 40,187 (1.78%) children were admitted with asthma before the age of 15, and 9,892 (0.44%) children were born to mothers w...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: asthma bipolar disorder hospitalizations inflammation Joseph Hayes schizophrenia Schizophrenia Bulletin Source Type: research