New Zealand researchers will carry out a multi-million dollar, world first study to prove whether there is a link between babies being given paracetamol and the development of asthma.
Auckland paediatric emergency medicine specialist at Starship Children's Hospital Dr Stuart Dalziel has received $4.99 million from the Health Research Council of New Zealand to carry out the trial which will include 3900 infants born at Auckland, Middlemore and Wellington hospitals.
The International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, the largest international epidemiological study of childhood asthma, included data from more than 200,000 in 31 countries and suggested that paracetamol given in the first year of life may influence the risk of developing later asthma.
Dalziel said it was unclear if the finding was due to the paracetamol itself or to the illness that led to it being given - for example, a chest infection.
"With this new trial, we will definitively answer whether paracetamol treatment, compared with ibuprofen treatment, as required for pain and fever in the first year of life, increases the risk of asthma at age six years," he said.