Asthma Less Likely For Kids With Dogs: Study

More than just being “man's best friend,” a study has found that when they have dogs, kids are less likely to have asthma.

According to The Guardian, the study has found that having a dog in the family can lower a child's risk of having asthma by as much as 15 percent, while having farm animals can actually lower that risk even more.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, involved evaluating all children born in Sweden from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2010 (for a total of 1,011,051 children). Dog and farm animal ownership is required to be registered by law in Sweden.

Of the children in the study, 376,638 preschool-aged kids and 276,298 school-aged kids were both exposed to dogs, and 1,729 preschool-aged and 958 school-aged kids were exposed to farm animals.

It was found that a child's exposure to dogs during the first year of life was associated with a 15 percent lower likelihood of having asthma, while exposure to farm animals led to a lower risk by 52 percent.

“Earlier studies have shown that growing up on a farm reduces a child’s risk of asthma to about half,” said the study's lead author Dr. Tove Fall from Uppsala University in Sweden.

“We wanted to see if this relationship was true also for children growing up with dogs in their homes,” explained Fall. “Our results confirmed the farming effect and we also saw that children who grew up with dogs had about 15% less asthma than children without dogs.”

“Because we had access to such a large and detailed data set, we could account for confounding factors such as asthma in parents, area of residence and socio-economic status,” he added.

The study's findings strongly support the “hygiene hypothesis,” which suggests that living in overly-clean or too hygienic conditions early in life can lead to a higher susceptibility to allergy conditions such as asthma.

“We know that children with established allergy to cats or dogs should avoid them, but our results also indicate that children who grow up with dogs have reduced risks of asthma later in life,” said study co-author Prof Catarina Almqvist Malmros from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.

Dogs just seem to bring humans a lot of benefits. Earlier, a study has found that they are bonded to their owners via the help of oxytocin, making them good companions. Now, they're even found to help young kids stay asthma-free, too.

What do you think? Would you adopt a dog to help your baby stay asthma-free? Pitch in your comments below.