Sibship characteristics and risk of allergic rhinitis and asthma

Studying associations between sibship characteristics and allergic diseases in detail may contribute clues to their etiology. The authors studied associations between sibship characteristics and risk of self-reported allergic rhinitis and asthma among 31,145 pregnant women participating in a nationwide study in Denmark during 1997-2000. Increasing sibship size was associated with a decreased risk of allergic rhinitis and asthma with allergic rhinitis but not with asthma without allergic rhinitis. The protective effect of having older siblings was stronger than the protective effect of having younger siblings for both allergic rhinitis and asthma with allergic rhinitis. There was no association between interval to closest older or younger sibling and risk of allergic rhinitis or asthma with allergic rhinitis, while the risk of asthma without allergic rhinitis increased with intervals of 2 or more years compared with less than 2 years to the nearest older sibling. The protective effect of having siblings on the risk of asthma with allergic rhinitis could be explained by a protective effect of siblings on the risk of allergic rhinitis alone. In conclusion, our findings suggest that different etiologic mechanisms are involved for allergic rhinitis and asthma with respect to the effect of sibship characteristics. Furthermore, the findings that allergic rhinitis was associated with the number of younger siblings but not with the age interval to younger siblings support the hypothesis of an influence of postnatal mechanisms and suggest that these mechanisms may not necessarily be operating only in early life.