For participants and public
What it the purpose of the study?
Childhood asthma became a very common condition in the UK during the 1980 and 1990s and a number of theories were put forward to explain the “asthma epidemic”. In 1994, Anthony Seaton and colleagues suggested that changes in the nation's diet might explain the rise in childhood asthma.
In 1997 we established the SEATON (Study of Eczema and Asthma To Observe the effects of Nutrition) group of children to investigate whether antioxidants in our diet (eg vitamin E) and certain nutrients (eg zinc, fats) during pregnancy can affect the immune system and lung development.