SynthesisThorax1997
Health effects of passive smoking. 3. Parental smoking and prevalence of respiratory symptoms and asthma in school age children.
Synthesis in Thorax, 1997. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 89 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
89 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 397 citations in OpenAlex.
- Health effects of passive smoking. 9. Parental smoking and spirometric indices in children.Thorax · 1998Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Health effects of passive smoking. 6. Parental smoking and childhood asthma: longitudinal and case-control studies.Thorax · 1998Pooled it
- The study protocol for a randomized controlled trial of a family-centred tobacco control program about environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) to reduce respiratory illness in Indigenous infants.BMC public health · 2010Trial
- Advising parents of asthmatic children on passive smoking: randomised controlled trial.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 1999Trial
- An analysis of associations of having children with smoking prevalence and intensity using nationally representative survey data in Japan.BMC public health · 2026Article
- The Role of Environmental Exposures in Pediatric Asthma Pathogenesis: A Contemporary Narrative Review.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Time to re-set our thinking about airways disease: lessons from history, the resurgence of chronic bronchitis / PBB and modern concepts in microbiology.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2024Review
- Childhood Wheeze, Allergic Rhinitis, and Eczema in Hong Kong ISAAC Study from 1995 to 2015.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Article
- Demographic and Clinical Characteristics of COVID-19 in Children and the Effect of Household Tobacco Smoke Exposure on COVID-19.Turkish archives of pediatrics · 2021Article
- Association between parents' smoking status and tobacco exposure in school-age children: assessment using major urine biomarkers.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Childhood food insecurity and incident asthma: A population-based cohort study of children in Ontario, Canada.PloS one · 2021Article
- Socioecological Predictors on Psychological Flourishing in the US Adolescence.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- Isolated night cough in children: how does it differ from wheeze?ERJ open research · 2020Article
- Suppressive effect of environmental tobacco smoke on murine Th2 cell-mediated nasal eosinophilic inflammation.Asia Pacific allergy · 2020Article
- Effects of parental smoking and indoor tobacco smoke exposure on respiratory outcomes in children.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Association of secondhand tobacco smoke exposure during childhood on adult cardiovascular disease risk among never-smokers.Annals of epidemiology · 2019Article
- 'Dry' and 'wet' cough: how reliable is parental reporting?BMJ open respiratory research · 2019Article
- Prenatal and postnatal tobacco smoke exposure and risk of severe bronchiolitis during infancy.Respiratory medicine · 2018Article
29 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundA systematic quantitative review of the evidence relating parental smoking to the prevalence of asthma and respiratory symptoms was conducted amongst school age children.
methodsSixty relevant studies were identified after consideration of 1593 articles selected by electronic search of the Embase and Medline databases using keywords relevant to passive smoking in children. The search was completed in April 1997 and identified 25 studies of asthma, 41 of wheeze, 34 of chronic cough, seven of chronic phlegm and six of breathlessness which were included in a quantitative overview.
resultsThe pooled odds ratios for either parent smoking were 1.21 (95% CI 1.10 to 1.34) for asthma, 1.24 (95% CI 1.17 to 1.31) for wheeze, 1.40 (95% CI 1.27 to 1.53) for cough, 1.35 (95% CI 1.13 to 1.62) for phlegm, and 1.31 (95% CI 1.08 to 1.59) for breathlessness. Adjustment for confounding had little effect. Evidence of heterogeneity between studies appeared largely explicable by publication bias with a superfluity of small studies with large odds ratios. However, excluding these had little effect on the pooled odds ratios. The prevalence of all symptoms increased with the number of parents who smoked. While maternal smoking had a greater effect than paternal smoking, the effect of father only was clearly significant.
conclusionsThe relationship between parental smoking and respiratory symptoms seems very likely to be causal given statistical significance, robustness to adjustment for confounding factors, consistency of the findings in different countries, and evidence of dose response. The raised risk in households where the father, but not the mother, smoked argues for a postnatal effect.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.