Women who’ve suffered domestic abuse can have a better risk of developing atopic diseases including asthma, latest research has found.

Published today within the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, the research led by the University of Birmingham found that in evaluation of patient records, there have been a significantly larger percentage of girls who had atopic diseases and had a history of being exposed to domestic abuse and violence in comparison with those that hadn’t.

After adjusting for possible cofounders, our results show women with a recorded exposure to domestic violence and abuse had a 52% increased risk of developing atopic diseases.

Domestic violence and abuse is a world issue that disproportionately affects women. We got down to deepen our understanding of the health impacts of domestic violence so evidence-based public health policies might be further developed to handle not only domestic violence, but secondary effects like the event of atopic diseases.”

Dr Joht Singh Chandan from the University of Birmingham and corresponding creator of the study

The team of researchers performed a retrospective open cohort study in the UK, taking a look at adult women (those aged 18 and older) with a physician recorded exposure to domestic violence and comparing them to women over 18 with no recorded exposure. Patients with pre-existing reports of atopic disease were excluded from the study.

A complete of 13,852 women were identified as being exposed to domestic violence and were matched to 49,036 similar women with no reported exposure. In total, 967/13,852 women within the exposed group (incidence rate (IR) 20.10 per 1,000 py) were diagnosed with atopic disease in comparison with 2,607/49,036 within the unexposed group (IR 13.24 per 1,000 py).

There have been limitations to the study. Women within the exposed group were more more likely to be a current smoker than women within the unexposed group. Ethnicity data was often lacking within the database and median follow-up for each groups of girls was relatively short given the relapsing nature of atopic disease. Researchers hope to handle these limitations in future studies.

Source:

Journal reference:

Nash, K., et al. (2023). Exposure to Domestic Abuse and the Subsequent Development of Atopic Disease in Women. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. doi.org/10.1016/j.jaip.2023.03.016.