Children who grow up around dogs may have a reduced risk of developing asthma.

Currently in Ireland, one in five children has asthma. The link between early life contact with dogs and the development of the disease has been studied extensively, however findings have so far been inconclusive.

Swedish researchers decided to assess this link again, but their study involved over one million children. They found that those who grew up around dogs were less likely to have asthma than children without dogs.

"Earlier studies have shown that growing up on a farm reduces a child's risk of asthma to about half. We wanted to see if this relationship also was true also for children growing up with dogs in their homes.

"Our results confirmed the farming effect, and we also saw that children who grew up with dogs had about 15% less asthma than children without dogs. Because we had access to such a large and detailed data set, we could account for confounding factors such as asthma in parents, area of residence and socioeconomic status," the researchers explained.

They emphasised that children with established allergies to cats or dogs should avoid these animals, however they said that their results indicate ‘that children who grow up with dogs have reduced risks of asthma later in life'.

Details of these findings are published in the journal, JAMA Pediatrics.