Researchers in the United States said on Friday that babies who are born four months before the flu season are at a higher percentage of developing asthma. Scientists stated that 30% of these babies might develop respiratory problems because the common infections they could get during the cold season are easily linked to asthma.

Dr. Tina Hartert, director of the center for Asthma Research at Vanderbilt University, whose study appears in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine said that all the infants are exposed to such problems but that this is “potentially preventable.”

Hartert added that some babies born in the Northern Hemisphere in the fall are at an increased risk of developing asthma. Her team tracked medical records of 95,000 infants and their mothers in the state of Tennessee. They discovered that the babies were at higher risk of developing asthma if they had bronchiolitis, a lung infection usually caused by respiratory syncytial virus or RSV.

Hartet also said that what they did show during the study was that “the timing of birth and the risk of developing asthma moves in time almost to the day with the peak of these viral infections each winter." It has been known that the higher risk for asthma is caused by genetic links, but Harter and her team doesn’t think this way. They blame the environmental factors for this type of respiratory problem.

The RSV infections happen in children when they are aged between 3 and 6 months, but the virus washes away leaving no complications. Hartet said that now they have to prove that preventing these types of infections is what keeps the infants away from developing asthma.