STRANGE HEALTH LINKS

THE surprising links between diseases. This week: Cancer and asthma THE children of people who have a family history of cancer might have a higher risk of developing asthma, suggests a 2019 U.S. study.

State University of New York researchers looked at data from the National Health Interview Survey of 57,000 children. More than 20 per cent of those with a family history of cancer had an asthma diagnosis — compared to 13 per cent in those without a family history of cancer. Researcher Dr Sairaman Nagarajan believes the link is possibly related to inherited changes in the balance of immune cells called T helper cells. He says: ‘They are normally present in a balanced state but we think in these children, there’s a skew towards upregulated [more active] Th2 cells, which respond to allergic stimuli.’