Study Links Pet Dogs With Snoring

Are you planning to buy a petdefine for your child?? STOP!!! Just take a look into the latest findings that warn kids who grow up with dogs or other furry pets at home are more likely to be heavy snorers as adults.

This may be a bad news for the petdefine lovers, but a team of researchers in Sweden have found that childhood exposure to dogs can boost the chances of snoring later in a life. They believe the problem occurs because of infectious bacteria spread by dogs.

"Dogs may increase airborne particles that would encourage inflammation and thereby alter upper airway anatomy early in life, causing an increased susceptibility for adult snoring," said the study's lead researcher Karl Franklin, MD, PhD, and a physician at University Hospital in Umea, Sweden.

To reach their findings, Franklin and a team of Nordic researchers polled 15,556 randomly selected people, including men and women of 25 to 54 years of age, from Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Estonia.

The researchers questioned all the participants about their childhood and snoring habits. They asked them whether a dog or other pets had lived in their home when they were born or growing up as a child, whether they were hospitalized for respiratory infections before age 2, and whether they had recurrent ear infections, as well as about their family size, parental education, and mothers' ages.

Just over 18% or 2,851 of the respondents reported habitual snoring, defined as loud and disturbing snoring at least three nights per week.

In the study, only dogs appeared to pose a snoring risk. The study did not find a similar association between snoring and cats or "other pets".

Following are the four childhood factors that were independently related to snoring in later life:

1.Being hospitalized for a respiratory infection before age 2 boosted the risk of later snoring by 1.27 times.
2.Suffering from recurrent ear infections as a child raised the risk 1.18 times.
3.Growing up in a family with more than five members increased risk 1.04 times.
Exposure to a dog in the home as a newborn boosted risk of later snoring 1.26 times

"These factors may enhance inflammatory processes and thereby alter upper airway anatomy early in life, causing an increased susceptibility for adult snoring," the authors of the study claim.

The findings were published in the online journal Respiratory Research.

Snoring is rough, vibratory sounds made in breathing during sleep. It is known to cause sleep deprivation to both the snorer and those who hear him/her, as well as knock-on effects: daytime drowsiness, irritability, lack of focus, decreased libido.

Snoring occurs when the soft palate, uvula, tongue, tonsils, and/or muscles in the back of the throat rub against each other and generate a vibrating sound during sleep.

"People who snore run an increased risk of early death and cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attacks or strokes," lead researcher Franklin said.

"These new findings suggest that further knowledge about the early life environment may contribute to the primary prevention of snoring," he concluded.