Cynics will say it’s another example of government going to the dogs. But federal funding of a new study involving kids and canines may actually help future generations breathe easier. In fact, it could lead to the end of a disease that afflicts millions of people around the world: asthma.

Evidence has mounted that infants of families with dogs are less prone to asthma than other babies. Researchers at the University of Arizona will investigate whether or not having a dog in the home before the child is born offers further protection. The hypothesis is that, somehow, while the mother is pregnant, a dog’s presence creates or modifies a protein in the fetus’s blood that fosters immunity.

The National Institutes of Health just tossed nearly a million dollars at the UA’s College of Pharmacy. Now the UA research team has two years to go fetch evidence.

Scientists have been chewing on the idea that dogs help babies with asthma for at least the past decade. In October of 2001, the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology published a study suggesting that, if exposed to dogs in infancy, kids were less at risk of developing the disease – but only if the child’s family didn’t have a history of it. However, that research didn’t consider the question of a dog’s presence before the child’s birth. And it didn’t concern itself with proteomics - the study of protein structures and functions.

Professor Serrine Lau, principal investigator of the UA study, is an expert in proteomics. She’ll be collaborating with faculty members who specialize in allergy biology, immunology and biostatistics. Lau hopes their work may one day be leveraged for “treatment or even preventive purposes” concerning asthma.

This is really great news for the unborn. However, if your child already has asthma, you’d probably be better off with a cat. Environmental Health Perspectives published a study in 2006 suggesting that asthmatic kids whose families owned dogs were more sensitive to, and adversely affected by, air pollution than those with cats.

Still, the idea that dogs could boost asthma immunity in babies’ blood is pretty amazing. Back in the 1990s, “the scientific community was convinced that pets would give you asthma," according to Dr. Guy Marks of the Institute of Respiratory Medicine. Now it looks like pooches may be purveyors of prevention. Man’s best friend might one day help us end the scourge of asthma altogether.

Cynics, of course, will probably say the scientific community is chasing its own tail. Dog lovers, however, are going to lap it up.

REFERENCES
“Researchers to Study How Dogs Decrease Asthma Susceptibility.” UA News. The University of Arizona. Oct. 2009. Web. 20 Oct. 2009

"Fed: Cats and dogs protect against asthma: research." AAP General News (Australia). 2001. HighBeam Research. Web. 20 Oct. 2009

Remes, Sami T., MD, MPH, et al. “Dog exposure in infancy decreases subsequent risk of frequent wheeze but not of atopy.” Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Elsevier. Oct. 2001. Web. 20 October 2009

McConnell, Rob, et al. “Dog Ownership Enhances Symptomatic Responses to Air Pollution in Children with Asthma.” Environmental Health Perspectives. Environmental Health Perspectives. Dec. 2006. Web. 20 Oct. 2009.