Smoking Parents Increase Heart Disease Risk in Children

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Children with smoking parents are more likely to develop heart diseases in adulthood than children with non-smoking parents reports a study by Henry West and team, and published in the Circulation, American Heart Association.

The researchers tracked people who participated in Young Finns Study about cardiovascular risks in 1980 and 1983 that involved childhood exposure to parental smoking. They also collected carotid ultrasound data in 2001 and 2007 from the participants. Childhood blood cotinine levels of the participants were measured in 2014 from the samples collected and frozen in 1980. The levels of cotinine indicated the amount of passive smoke exposure in an individual, reported Science Daily.

Non-detectable levels of cotinine were reported to be 84 percent in children who were not exposed to smoke with neither of the parents smoking; 62 percent with one of the parent smoking; and 43 percent for children with both parents smoking.

The findings revealed that heart disease due to the risk of developing carotid plaque in adulthood are about two folds higher in children with one or both the parents smoking, compared to children brought up in non-smoking households.

"Although we cannot confirm that children with a detectable blood cotinine in our study was a result of passive smoke exposure directly from their parents, we know that a child's primary source of passive smoke exposure occurs at home," Dr. Costan Magnussen, study lead author and senior research fellow at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania in Australia, explained notes Science Daily.

It was also observed that when smoking parents limited their children from being exposed to secondary smoke, the risk of developing carotid plaque was two times higher whereas the risk was four times higher when parents did not limit the children from the exposure, said Time.    

Meanwhile, a recent study reveals that children born to mothers exposed to second hand tobacco smoke during gestation are at a high risk of eczema and various other skin problems in childhood, according to Medscape. The research said that blood tests and questionnaires on prenatal smoke exposure in elementary school children revealed that children who were exposed to second hand smoke in their mother's womb are 50 percent more likely to have a history of atopic dermatitis than children who had no such exposure.      

Magnussen added that "For parents who are trying to quit smoking, they may be able to reduce some of the potential long-term risk for their children by actively reducing their children's exposure to secondhand smoke". He also said that "Not smoking at all is by far the safest option."