Dietary habits established earlier in life may be linked to potentially the future development of asthma as new research has found that substances present in cooked meats are associated with increased wheezing in children.

Their study, published in the journal Thorax, highlights pro-inflammatory compounds called advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) as an example of early dietary risk factors that may have broad clinical and public health implications for the prevention of inflammatory airway disease.

“Research identifying dietary factors that influence respiratory symptoms in children is important, as these risks are potentially modifiable and can help guide health recommendations,” said senior study author Sonali Bose, Assistant Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

“Our findings will hopefully inform future longitudinal studies to further investigate whether these specific dietary components play a role in childhood airways disease such as asthma.”

The researchers examined 4,388 children between 2 and 17 years of age from the 2003-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a program of the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It is designed to evaluate the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States through interviews and physical examinations.

The researchers used NHANES survey data to evaluate associations between dietary advanced glycation end-products and meat consumption frequencies, and respiratory symptoms.

They found that higher advanced glycation end-products intake was significantly associated with increased odds of wheezing, importantly including wheezing that disrupted sleep and exercise, and that required prescription medication.

Similarly, higher intake of non-seafood meats was associated with wheeze-disrupted sleep and wheezing that required prescription medication.

“We found that higher consumption of dietary advanced glycation end-products, which are largely derived from intake of non-seafood meats, was associated with increased risk of wheezing in children, regardless of overall diet quality or an established diagnosis of asthma,” said Jing Gennie Wang, lead author of the study, and a former fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.