Asthma is a chronic disease that is on the rise in Canada. Often, it starts in childhood.

There’s something about the first few years of life. What happens in those years seems to have a big effect on the development of asthma.

Maybe it’s the crib the baby slept in. Maybe it’s the exposure it had to animals. Maybe it’s the interaction of these environments with a baby’s genetic make-up. We just don’t know.

Dr. Malcom R. Sears, professor of medicine at McMaster University, is leading a study that looks at how genes and the environment affect the development of asthma in childhood. His research project, the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development study, will follow 5,000 children from when they’re inside the womb to their fifth birthday.

Dr. Sears’ hypothesis is that a child’s environment will affect how well their lungs work as adults.

But he doesn’t discount the role gene

s play in the development of asthma.  He said it’s likely that certain children are born with small airways, and that’s why they develop asthma.

Dr. Sears hopes to capture and study some of the elements that make up a child’s early environment.

He’s taking the unusual step of bringing a vaccum into a newborn’s home. When a baby is three months old, his team will vaccum the child’s bed to collect dust. The dust will be analysed for things that could be linked to asthma.

Dr. Sears will also be measuring other things, like stress and socioeconomic status, that could affect disease development. He will look at how the materials and heating system used in a house could, in some way,  contribute to a child’s development of asthma.

When asked when we could expect to see some results, Dr. Sears said he would certainly publish significant findings as soon as they were available.

But we might have to wait a few years.

Dr. Sears’s research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the AllerGen Network of Centres of Excellence.

Photo curtesy of RogelSM