When moms lit up, kids
were also almost twice as likely to need surgery for recurrent ear infections
or similar problems, researchers reported.
The findings come from
a combination of 61 past studies. While they can't prove that smoke exposure
causes ear infections, researchers suggested that if that's the case, hundreds
of thousands of ear infections may be due to parents' smoking each year.
"It's pretty
impressive, especially since ear infections cause enormous pain," said Dr.
Michael Weitzman, who studies the effects of parental smoking at New York
University Medical Center and was not involved in the study.
The new paper
"once again highlights a common child health problem that is profoundly
influenced by mothers' smoking," he told Reuters Health, "and it
focuses our attention more than previous studies have on it resulting in
surgical procedures for children."
Taken together, the
studies showed that kids living with a smoker had a 37 percent higher risk of
any "middle ear disease," including ear infections and hearing
problems—and a 62 percent higher risk if the household smoker was their mom.
When mothers smoked,
kids were also 86 percent more likely to get surgery for a middle ear
condition, including recurrent ear infections, than if no smokers were in the
house.
About three out of
four kids have had an ear infection by the time they are three years old.
Dr. Joseph DiFranza, a
tobacco researcher from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in
Worcester, said that increased risk of surgery—which now usually involves
putting a tube in the ear to drain out fluid, is especially worrisome.
"Ear infections
themselves are very common, but the surgery is not," he told Reuters
Health.
Experts speculate that
exposure to secondhand smoke may cause tubes in the ear to get inflamed and
block up. Water could then leak into an empty pocket behind the ear drum,
creating an ideal environment for bacteria to grow and cause infection.
"There are going
to be kids who live in families with smokers who don't get ear
infections," said Kathleen Daly, who studies ear infections at the
University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. But living with a smoker
"definitely puts the child at higher risk," she told Reuters Health.
The review's authors,
led by Laura Jones of the University of Nottingham in England, calculated that
if secondhand smoke does indeed cause ear infections, about 130,000 of close to
2 million middle ear diseases in UK kids in 2008 would be due to parents lighting
up.
Additionally, 293,000
cases of frequent ear infections in the U.S., out of about 4.5 million
annually, would be attributed to secondhand smoke from the home, they reported
in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
Parents' smoking has
also been linked to asthma and allergy problems in kids, and moms who smoke
while pregnant also put their baby at risk for sudden infant death.
Weitzman pointed out
that the review didn't take into account other consequences of ear infections
in kids, such as parents' missed work days, and extra antibiotic prescriptions
breeding resistant bacteria.
Source: Reuters 
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