Phototherapy and the Risk of Asthma :

This week we offer another study of the potential risks associated with phototherapy, this time focusing on asthma. Kuzniewicz et al. (10.1542/peds.2018-0662) used the Kaiser Permanente database involving 109,212 infants born between 2010 and 2014 and found that 16.7% of babies had a maximum total serum bilirubin (TSB) level of ≥15 mg/dL and 11.5% received phototherapy. The authors found that when compared to children with a TSB between 3 and 5.9 mg/dL, there was a small but significant risk of developing asthma in children whose TSBs fell between 9 and 17.9 but not in those who had a TSB >= 18 mg/dl.  The authors found there was no association between phototherapy use and subsequent asthma The bottom line from this study is that the benefits of phototherapy continue to shine over any increased risk of a child developing asthma as a result.