Dr. Gabriel J. Escobar and his colleagues have discovered that children who have experienced hospitalization due to the virus are more likely to develop asthma or wheezing during their first three years of life.
Other risk factors for recurrent wheezing in early childhood include birth between 34 and 36 weeks, and exposure to supplemental oxygen for asphyxiation in the neonatal period.
The development of asthma in infants is affected by sex, race, and family history of asthma, however the infant’s response to RSV infection may also be important, the researchers explained.
"Infants whose response to RSV infection is severe enough to come to medical attention may represent a population genetically predetermined to be hypersensitive to developing bronchoconstriction when confronted with a trigger," they suggested.