Having parents who smoked increases risk of pediatric MS: Study
Limiting children's exposure to cigarette smoke may reduce chances of onset
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A child wearing a gas mask sites between a woman and man in 1950s-style attire who are smoking a cigarette and a pipe, respectively.
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Parental smoking significantly increases a child's risk of pediatric multiple sclerosis.
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If both parents smoked immediately before pregnancy, childhood MS risk increased over tenfold.
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Promoting smoke-free environments before and during pregnancy is a key prevention strategy for pediatric MS.
Having parents who have ever smoked cigarettes, or who smoked in the three months before pregnancy, is associated with a significantly increased likelihood of childhood-onset multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a small study in Italy.
The findings suggest that early-life exposure to cigarette smoke, including around the time of conception, may influence a child’s risk of developing MS.
“Limiting children’s exposure to cigarette smoke may contribute to reducing the risk of MS onset. Promoting smoke-free environments therefore represents a potential avenue for primary prevention in susceptible pediatric populations,” researchers wrote.
The study, “Reducing Early-Life Smoke Exposure as a Preventive Strategy for Pediatric Multiple Sclerosis: Results from the PEDIGREE Study,” was published in Neurology and Therapy.Â
Research shows people who smoke are more likely to develop MS
MS is a neurological disorder that usually manifests in early adulthood. However, in rare cases, it can develop in childhood or adolescence — this is known as pediatric-onset MS.
The causes of MS remain incompletely understood, but several risk factors have been identified. A large body of research has consistently shown that people who smoke cigarettes or are exposed to secondhand smoke are more likely to develop MS.
While emerging evidence seems to suggest that exposure to cigarette smoke also increases the risk of developing MS in childhood or adolescence, this is less well established.
To explore whether children exposed to parental smoking — even if they never smoked themselves — face a higher risk of the disease later on, a team led by scientists in Italy analyzed data from 114 children with MS and 121 children without the disease enrolled in the PEDIGREE study.
PEDIGREE is a multicenter initiative in Italy aiming to identify genetic and environmental risk factors for pediatric MS. As part of the study, parents completed questionnaires detailing their smoking histories, and the team used statistical analyses to examine links between parental smoking and MS risk.
Results showed that, for patients ages 10-17, having ever smoked cigarettes was not significantly associated with a greater likelihood of having MS. However, if both parents had a history of smoking, the likelihood of MS for the child was significantly increased by 79% after accounting for other factors.
This “highlights a potentially relevant role of parental smoking exposure in [pediatric MS] susceptibility,” the researchers wrote.
MS risk rose tenfold if both parents smoked right before pregnancy
If both parents had smoked in the three months immediately before pregnancy, the risk of MS was increased even more substantially, by more than tenfold. This suggests that parental factors immediately before conception may impact a child’s lifelong risk of MS, the researchers said, highlighting a need for more study into this association.
In further analyses that looked at mothers and fathers separately, results showed no significant associations between the mother’s smoking history and a child’s chances of developing MS.
Having a father with a smoking history was associated with an increased risk in the initial analyses. However, after adjusting for other factors such as educational attainment, this difference was not statistically significant.
Our adjusted analyses did not reveal consistent independent associations between either paternal or maternal smoking and disease risk. However, crude analyses suggested a potentially stronger influence of paternal smoking compared with maternal smoking.
The researchers noted, however, that this study was relatively small, and larger populations may be needed to detect significant associations between parental smoking and childhood MS.
“Our adjusted analyses did not reveal consistent independent associations between either paternal or maternal smoking and disease risk. However, crude analyses suggested a potentially stronger influence of paternal smoking compared with maternal smoking,” the researchers wrote, noting that this could be because men tend to smoke more heavily than women.
“Our findings support further investigation of maternal and paternal smoking in larger, well-powered studies and reinforce the relevance of promoting smoke-free environments before and during pregnancy,” the researchers concluded.
