Associations between postpartum depressive symptoms and childhood asthma diminish with child age.

BACKGROUND: Affecting 19% of women, postpartum depression is a major concern to the immediate health of mothers and infants. In the long-term, it has been linked to the development of early-onset asthma at school entry, but only if the depression persists beyond the postnatal period. No studies have tested whether associations with postpartum depressive symptoms and early-onset asthma phenotypes persist into later school age. OBJECTIVE: To determine associations between maternal postpartum depressive symptoms and childhood asthma between the ages of 5-10 by using a nested longitudinal design. METHODS: Data were drawn from the 1994-2004 administrations of the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, which tracks the health of a nationally representative sample of children in Canada. Child asthma was diagnosed by a health professional, and maternal depressive symptoms were assessed by the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale. Analyses were conducted by using a multilevel modelling approach, in which longitudinal assessments of asthma in 1696 children were nested within the exposure of postpartum depression. RESULTS: Postpartum depressive symptoms had a 1.5-fold significant association with childhood asthma between the ages 6-8. This was independent of male sex, maternal asthma, non-immigrant status, low household socioeconomic status, being firstborn, low birthweight, low family functioning and urban-rural residence, of which the first 4 covariates elevated the risk of asthma. Statistical significance was lost at age 8 when maternal prenatal smoking replaced urban-rural residence as a covariate. At ages 9-10, an association was no longer evident. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Women affected by postpartum depressive symptoms are concerned about long-term health effects of their illness on their infants. Although postpartum depressive symptoms were associated with school-age asthma at ages 6 and 7, this association diminished later. Both home and school life stress should be considered in future studies on asthma development later in childhood.

Low-income Canadian Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal parent-child interactions.

BACKGROUND: Limited research is available on the performance of North American Aboriginal(1) people on the Nursing Child Assessment Teaching Scales (NCATS) and available research examines parent-child interactions within Aboriginal samples drawn from the USA. Most published normative data on low-income people's performance on the NCATS are also limited to samples drawn from the USA. The purpose of this research study was to use the NCATS measure to: (1) begin to develop a knowledge base that describes the parent-child interactions observed in Canadian low-income samples; and (2) explore the relationship between parent-infant interactions and ethnicity (Aboriginal or Non-Aboriginal) within a low-income Canadian sample. METHODS: Secondary analysis was completed on data collected as part of a larger study designed to examine the impact of low-income situations on pre-school children's health and development in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The NCATS measure of parent-child interaction was administered to all children (1-36 months old) and their parents in the low-income non-probability sample. The sample derived for secondary analysis consists of 12 Aboriginal parent-child pairs (11 mothers and 1 father) and 48 Non-Aboriginal parent-child pairs (47 mothers and 1 father). RESULTS: The data analysis suggests that although low-income Aboriginal parents may be less verbal with their children in interactions, the overall interaction quality is not different from that of other low-income parents. However, both groups' parent-child interaction scores were less than the published 10th percentile cut-off score, indicating 'worrisome scores' and less than optimal interactions. CONCLUSION: While the findings that compare the Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal samples are limited by the small sample size, the fact that these findings agree with those from heterogeneous Aboriginal samples drawn from the USA are encouraging. Finally, the findings provide needed information about parent-child interactions in Canadian low-income urban samples including data from Aboriginal parents and children.

Warrantable evidence in nursing science.

Consensus among nurse scholars has not been reached regarding suitable qualities for accepting or rejecting the evidence arising from various world views. The authors' purpose in writing the paper is to describe the qualities or warrants for evaluating scientific findings (the 'evidence') of different research perspectives. The warrantable evidence pertinent to post-positivist, interpretivist, critical social theorist, and feminist perspectives are described and common warrants are suggested. Three warrants common to these scientific perspectives are proposed: (a) scrutiny and critique of methodological rigor and findings by the scientific community; (b) corroboration and intersubjectivity; and (c) scope of the evidence. The identification of common warrantable evidence will assist nurses in developing some core values regarding the constituents of good science or good scholarship even in the face of pluralism in nursing science approaches.