Response to Dr. Kawada

Excerpt

We thank Dr. Kawada for his interest in our paper and taking time to raise some valuable comments. In our study, we analyzed a large amount of population-based register data with national coverage and a substantial number of infants. The available data allowed adjustments for multiple maternal-, delivery-, and newborn-related background factors. We are aware of the weaknesses of our study, such as lack of data on parental asthma or duration of breastfeeding. As Dr. Kawada mentioned, there are also some other important environmental and nutritional factors after birth, and factors like prenatal maternal stress, which should be considered as risk factors for asthma and atopic dermatitis in childhood. Unfortunately, such data were not available in our study. We agree that further studies are needed to evaluate predictors for asthma and atopic dermatitis in children. …