Winter babies have vulnerable lungs

Winter birth puts you at the risk of developing asthma and other lung related problems in old age, according to a recent study.

Smoking mothers, respiratory infections and the date you were born contribute to determine how fast your lungs are ageing. Cecilie Svanes from the University of Bergen (UiB) has recently discovered three development factors that influence ageing of the lungs.

Svanes explained that having a mother who smoked when she was pregnant with you will affect your lungs in a negative way. The same is the case if you were born during the winter months, or if you experienced a severe respiratory infection at a very young age.

"It is logical that early life development also affects the systems that maintain our body and repair damage. If so, this could explain why some people do not tolerate exposure to certain toxics in later life. And that is actually what we found," she says.

Svanes believes that the discovery of some people being more vulnerable than others can be used in a positive way in preventive health care.  The discovery is published in the journal PlosONE.