Wanted! Cats Me Protect Babies Tapestry

We know that cats keep mice away. But did you know that they can also help prevent asthma in newborns? That is the conclusion of a new study by scientists from the Copenhagen Studies on Asthma in Childhood Research Center (COPSAC), Denmark. Cats neutralise the effect of a gene that, when activated, doubles the risk of developing asthma in children. Having a cat in the home when a child is born means that this gene is never activated. Cats remove the increased risk of developing asthma among children with a particular variation of the gene 17q21, called TT, which has the strongest impact on whether or not a child could develop asthma. Almost one in three children in the study carried the TT gene variant, regardless of whether or not their mo