NEW YORK, Feb 7,(RTRS): Children who start swimming before the age of 2 may be at increased risk of a common infant lung infection, and possibly asthma and respiratory allergies later in life, a new study suggests.
The findings, reported in the European Respiratory Journal, add to evidence that exposure to chlorinated pools may affect children’s respiratory health — particularly if they have a family history of asthma or respiratory allergies like hay fever.
Experts have suspected that the air quality around pools, particularly indoor ones, is to blame. When the chlorine used to disinfect pools combines with swimmers’ sweat, saliva or urine, irritating chlorine byproducts are formed, and over time these chemicals may damage the airways.
In the new study, Belgian researchers found that infant swimming — whether in indoor or outdoor pools — was linked to a heightened risk of bronchiolitis.
Bronchiolitis is an infection of the lungs’ small airways, usually caused by the respiratory syncytial virus, that is common in infants.
In this study, infant swimmers who developed the infection were also at increased risk of developing asthma or respiratory allergies by kindergarten.
“This suggests that chlorinated pool attendance can increase the risk of asthma and respiratory allergies by making the airways more sensitive not only to allergens but also to infectious agents,” senior researcher Dr Alfred Bernard, of Catholic University Louvain in Brussels, told Reuters Health in an email. He did not advise parents to keep their young children away from pools, since it is an “enjoyable” way for kids to be active.
“Parents should, however, not lose sight that chlorine-based disinfectants and their derivatives are strong irritants not only for the skin but also the airways,” Bernard added.
He said that parents should be sure not to over chlorinate their home pools and to try to avoid public pools that are heavily chlorinated. Some clues to the latter, according to Bernard, include an overwhelming chlorine smell, and eye, skin and throat irritation in pool users.
Where possible, the researcher said, parents can also opt for public pools that use alternative disinfecting methods, like ozone treatment — which has long been used in Europe and is becoming more common in the U.S. For their study, Bernard and his colleagues assessed 430 Belgian kindergarteners and surveyed parents on their children’s health history, swimming habits and other factors.
They found that of children exposed to chlorinated indoor or outdoor pools before age 2, 36 percent had a history of bronchiolitis, compared with 24 percent of their peers.

Childbirth: Even under Canada’s system of universal healthcare, low-income women are less likely than their wealthier counterparts to receive epidural pain relief during childbirth, a new study finds.
The findings mirror those of studies from the U.S. and other countries, and suggest that factors other than health insurance are at work, according to the researchers.
An epidural involves injecting pain medication through a catheter into the lower spine, and is considered the most effective way to relieve pain during childbirth. But studies have suggested that socioeconomics — including income, race or education — sway a woman’s likelihood of having an epidural. For the new study, reported in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, researchers looked at epidural use among more than 200,000 Ontario women who gave birth between 2004 and 2006.
They found that the one-fifth of women from the poorest neighborhoods in the study were 41 percent less likely to have epidural pain relief than the one-fifth of women from the wealthiest neighborhoods. There was a similar discrepancy between the least educated and most educated women. The effects of income and education were seen even though the researchers accounted for factors like health problems in the mother and pregnancy complications — which can hinder the use of epidurals.
Moreover, given Canada’s universal health system, the findings suggest that factors other than insurance coverage are important, say the researchers, led by Ning Liu of the University of Ottawa.

Parkinson’s: Treadmill training can help Parkinson’s patients to walk more normally, according to a new review of the medical literature.
However, it’s unclear how long the benefits of treadmill training will last, or the best way to deliver this type of training to patients with the movement disorder, Dr Jan Mehrholz of the Wissenschaftliches Institut in Kreischa, Germany and colleagues note.
In Parkinson’s disease, neurons producing dopamine, an important chemical messenger in the brain, die off, leading to movement problems, tremor and rigidity. Many Parkinson’s patients have a characteristic shuffling gait, which can boost their risk of falls and fractures.
Treadmill training has been used to help improve gait in Parkinson’s patients, but more information is needed on its effectiveness and safety, Mehrholz and colleagues say. To investigate, they identified eight studies that compared treadmill training to no treadmill training in a total of 203 Parkinson’s patients.
Their analysis found that training significantly improved walking speed, stride length and walking distance. However, it did not improve the “cadence,” or rhythm, of a patient’s gait.
The evidence should be interpreted with caution, Mehrholz and colleagues say, because it’s based on only eight small studies.
“There is still a need for larger trials to establish if treadmill training can be safely used as a routine therapy sfor Parkinson’s patients,” Mehrholz said in a statement accompanying the study published in The Cochrane Library, a publication of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international non-profit that evaluates medical research.
“We also need to answer basic questions,” Mehrholz said, “about how long the benefits last and what a good training program should consist of. For instance, how often and how long should patients train for?”