New Study Finds Possible Link Between Asthma and BPA

A recent study has discovered a potential risk of asthma in children with prenatal exposure to Bisphenol-A (BPA).Mouse pups born to mothers that had been exposed to BPA in the study developed allergic asthma. The researchers put 3 different measurements of BPA in the drinking water of female mice before, during and after pregnancy. Once born, their pups were injected with ovalbumin to make them susceptible to asthma. Mice born to mothers who had been exposed to 10 micrograms of BPA developed airway problems, though that did not occur among mice born to mothers with lower or no exposure.

“The mice they used are very well-accepted models for asthma and allergies so it should be a very good model of what we would expect to happen in humans, although that is not always the case,” says Dr. Erick Forno, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami “It’s an exciting finding, an initial finding; I think the next thing is going to have to be not only the level of exposure but also how much or how prolonged does the exposure have to be and if there are any other factors involved.”.

Dr. Terumi Midoro-Horiuti, an associate professor of pediatrics and biochemistry and molecular biology in the Child Health Research Center at Children’s Hospital, University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, was the senior author of the study. Dr. Midoro-Horiuti said her group is now following children whose cord blood has been tested for BPA and then grouped by levels of exposure to see if they develop asthma.

Sources for this story include: http://health.yahoo.com/news…