Recent research has highlighted the link between eczema and asthma. Children with eczema have twice the risk of having asthma later in life.

In the largest study of its kind, researchers tracked 8500 Tasmanians from Childhood to get the first concise picture of how allergic conditions develop. The findings, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, support the theory that eczema is often the first step in an allergic chain that leads to other related conditions such as hay fever and asthma. People who had childhood eczema were more likely to develop childhood asthma or new-onset asthma later in life, or to have asthma that persisted from childhood into middle age.

One in six children have asthma, that can not only affect their health but also their learning, as it is the leading cause of school absenteeism.