According to new study in the U.S. children who are exposed to cats soon after birth may have an increased risk of developing eczema, while being exposed to two or more dogs at home may offer some slight protection.
Lead researcher Esmeralda Morales, M.D., Pediatric Pulmonary Fellow at the University of Arizona in Tucson, says other studies have found that having cats or dogs at home appears to protect against allergic diseases, so they expected to have similar findings.
Apparently pets are a source of a compound called endotoxin, and if a child is exposed to endotoxin early in life, the immune system may be skewed away from developing an allergic profile.
The study which tracked 486 children from birth, asked parents how many cats and dogs they had in the house at the time the child was born, and then followed up one year later to see which children had been diagnosed with eczema.
It was found that of the 134 children with cats in the household, 27.6% had eczema by one year of age, compared with 17.8% of 286 children without cats.
That equates to more than a quarter of babies in cat households with eczema by age 1, compared with one in six of children living without cats.
While exposure to cats increased a child's risk of eczema whether or not their mother had asthma, the effect was more pronounced in children whose mothers did not have asthma.
Asthma could be a possible marker of mothers less likely to encourage cat contact.