PA News Feeds  Allergic diseases 'gender related'  Doctors have
discovered a child's risk of developing an allergic disease is
doubled if a parent of the same sex has suffered from it,
according to a new study.  Professor Hasan Arshad, a consultant
in allergy and immunology at Southampton General Hospital, found
that allergies such as asthma and eczema were gender-related and
not simply hereditary.  "We have known for decades that allergy
runs in the family and many thought that maternal effect was
greater than paternal effect due to a mother's closeness to her
child, but we have discovered the inheritance is from mother to
daughter and father to son," said Prof Arshad.  His team
assessed 1,456 patients recruited from birth 23 years ago and
found the risk of asthma in boys was only increased if their
fathers suffered from the condition while, if mothers had
asthma, it doubled the risk in their daughters but not sons.
The research, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical
Immunology and funded by the