Parental Atopy and Exposure to Pets on Asthma: A Hospital-Based Case-Control Study

Objectives: studies of parental atopy, exposure to pets, and the risk of asthma have provided conflicting results. we aimed to as- sess the relationship between asthma among adults with parental atopy, pet keeping inside, and pet keeping outside the home. this study involved a total of 159 adults. the clinically diagnosed cases were 53 adults with asthma as per global initiative for asthma (gina) guidelines and 106 controls without asthma. methods: the study design was a hospital based case-control study. information on parental atopy and exposure to pets was collected by using a self-administrated questionnaire. we used the exposure odds ratio and 95% confidence interval (ci) to quantify the relation between determinants of interest and the risk of asthma. these were estimated using logistic regression analysis with spss version 11.5. results: the paternal and maternal history of asthma were found to have significant effect on asthma among adults with adjusted odds ratio (or) of 6.70 (1.92-23.33 95%ci) and 3.33 (1.25-8.89 95% ci) respectively. parental history and parental atopy signifi- cantly increased risk of asthma among adults with adjusted odds ratios of 5.78 (2.38-14.05 95% ci) and 3.65 (1.58-8.43 95% ci) re- spectively. there was no significant association between asthma and exposure to pets. the adjusted odds ratios for pet keeping inside and outside the house were 1.61 (0.55-4.7395%ci) and 1.32 (0.61-2.87 95%ci) respectively. conclusions: our results support the hypothesis that both paren- tal history and parental atopy increase the risk of asthma among adults whereas pet keeping inside and outside the house during the previous 12-month period were not significantly associated with asthma among adults.