Maternal tobacco exposure during pregnancy and allergic rhinitis in offspring: A systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Maternal tobacco exposure during pregnancy is known to cause a potential hazard to the offspring's health. So far, published studies have shown no consistent results with whether tobacco exposure in utero is causally linked to the development of allergic rhinitis in offspring. The aim of this study was to comprehensively evaluate the association between maternal tobacco exposure during pregnancy and allergic rhinitis in offspring by meta-analysis and to provide reference for clinical work. METHODS: Literatures were searched in CNKI, Wanfang Data, VIP, SinoMed, PubMed, Web of science and Embase up to September 30,2020. Screening, inclusion, quality assessment, data extraction and data analysis of the literatures were conducted. Meta-analysis was performed with Revman 5.3 and State15.1 software. Odds ratio (OR) and 95%CI were used as observation indicators. RESULTS: We had retrieved 16 articles with 22 independent datasets and 11,49,879 sample size. When all the studies were analyzed together, the results showed that maternal smoking exposure during pregnancy would increase the risk of allergic rhinitis in offspring (OR = 1.13, 95%CI:1.02–1.26), especially maternal passive smoking during pregnancy (OR = 1.39, 95%CI:1.05–1.84). But subgroup analysis showed that maternal active smoking during pregnancy was only significantly associated with offspring allergic rhinitis in cross-sectional studies (OR = 1.24, 95%CI:1.07–1.45) and study done in America study (OR = 1.22, 95%CI:1.05–1.42). CONCLUSIONS: Tobacco exposure during pregnancy could increase the risk of allergic rhinitis in offspring. The importance of avoiding prenatal tobacco exposure should be emphasized more for the health of next generation in the public.