Exposure to second-hand smoking during pregnancy or early childhood increases the chance of the child developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), revealed a recent study.
The study published in Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open was conducted by researchers in China’s Sun Yat-sen University. Participants of the study were more than 48,000 children between the ages 6 and 18.
Dr Li-Zi Lin and her team tested the correlation between prenatal, early postnatal and current exposure to second-hand smoking (SHS) and development of ADHD symptoms. They found that children with exposure to SHS were more likely to have symptoms of ADHD and its subtypes than children with no exposure.
Moreover, the chances increased with the increasing number of cigarettes smoked around them. Those whose father smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day were most likely to develop the symptoms.
“Our findings highlight the importance of strengthening public health efforts to reduce SHS exposure, which may reduce the health and economic burdens of individuals with ADHD,” the authors of the study wrote in its conclusion.
Another study linked the usage of paracetamol during pregnancy to the development of autism and ADHD in children.
