Children with asthma scored significantly lower than those without asthma on measures of episodic memory, based on longitudinal data from nearly 500 individuals.
Animal models have shown associations between asthma and memory problems, but data for children are lacking, wrote Nicholas J. Christopher-Hayes, MA, of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues.
“Asthma is very frequent among children, and there is mounting evidence from rodent models that asthma may result in neural injury in the hippocampus, which in turn may cause memory loss,” Christopher-Hayes said in an interview. “Although there is also a good amount of research with older adults, very little research has been done with children, the period that is most frequently linked to asthma onset,” he said. Therefore, the researchers leveraged a…