Experts say that a new study looking at the dairy intake of 61,912 women shows there may be a connection.
Children of mothers in the study who drank several glasses of milk a day in pregnancy had a lower risk of asthma at seven years old than those who drank no milk.
But children of mothers who ate one or more low-fat yoghurts a day were 1.6 times more likely to have hay fever or asthma symptoms than those who had no yoghurt.
Dr Ekaterina Maslova, of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, USA, led the study and believes the risk may be caused by ‘non-fat related nutrient components’ in the yoghurt.
But a different overall diet or lifestyle for the women who ate the yoghurts could also be the reason for the findings.
Dr Maslova said: ‘This is the first study of its kind to link low-fat yoghurt intake during pregnancy with an increased risk of asthma and hay fever in children.
‘This could be due to a number of reasons and we will further investigate whether this is linked to certain nutrients or whether people who ate yoghurt regularly had similar lifestyle and dietary patterns which could explain the increased risk of asthma.’
She added: ‘We cannot make any conclusions at this stage. We need to replicate these results in other studies first.’
The study will be presented at the
European Respiratory Society's meeting in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on 25 September.
