A study published in this month's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a journal of the American Thoracic Society, found that children who start nursery before the age of two are twice as likely to experience wheezing in the first year of life.
Children who went to nursery at an early age and had older siblings were more than four times as likely to experience infections and symptoms associated with allergies.
Previous research has suggested that children who attend nursery and have older siblings build a greater immunity to asthma and allergies through increased exposure to germs.
However, the new study by Dutch researchers found that children who had increased exposure to germs experienced more airway symptoms, and children without older siblings and who did not attend nursery had fewer symptoms until the age of eight.
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