TV-gazing could lead to asthma in kids

Children who spend more than two hours a day watching television double the risk of developing asthma, according to a new study in the UK. However, the researchers believe that excessive TV watching is symptomatic of a sedentary lifestyle, which is likely to be the root cause of the problem, rather than TV-watching itself.

Led by Dr Andrea Sherriff of Glasgow University, the researchers established a link between large amounts of TV watching and the respiratory condition. The study, published in Thorax journal, tracked the health of over 3,000 UK children from birth to 11.

The parents were quizzed annually on symptoms of wheezing among their children and whether a doctor had diagnosed asthma. There may be a window in early in life when activity does something to protect the lungs, co-author James Paton said.

Parents were also asked to assess their children's TV viewing habits from the age of three-and-a-half years. All of the children were free of wheeze as babies and toddlers. But at the age of eleven-and-a-half, 6 per cent of the children had developed asthma.

And children who watched TV for more than two hours a day were almost twice as likely to have been diagnosed with asthma as those who watched the telly less. However, the odds were still small - about two in 100.

Of the children with asthma, two per cent  did not watch TV, 20 per cent watched TV daily for less than an hour, 34 per cent watched 1-2 hours a day, and 44 per cent watched more than two hours daily.