Living with cats does not worsen asthma in children, suggests study
Large-scale study on children with asthma and allergies suggests no link between exposure to cats and asthma severity
Frontiers
Asthma is the most common chronic disease and one of the main causes of hospitalization among children. The Global Asthma Network has estimated that its global prevalence is 9.1% for children and 11.0% for adolescents, but this percentage varies greatly between countries, regions, and environments. Worldwide, the highest prevalence of pediatric asthma (above 20%) occurs in the British Isles and in parts of Oceania and the Middle East. Known risk factors for developing asthma include exposure to air pollution and smoking, childhood viral infections, obesity, and pre-existing allergies like eczema or hay fever.
Patients anecdotally self-report that exposure to animal dander appears to trigger asthma attacks. However, clinical and epidemiological data on this is so far contradictory, coming mostly from small studies on subgroups that aren’t necessarily representative of the wider population. Now, researchers have demonstrated in Frontiers in Allergy that sharing a home with cats may not worsen the outcomes of children with asthma and allergies.
“Here we show in a nationwide cohort of children in Sweden with asthma and allergies, that children living with a cat had similar asthma severity, exacerbation, asthma control, and lung function to children living without cats in the short term,” said corresponding author Dr Resthie R Putri, a postdoctoral fellow at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
“We also did not see any differences in asthma outcomes related to the number of cats, the cat’s sex, or the cat’s age.”
Large pediatric sample
In 2023, Putri and colleagues began a study on a cohort of 30,277 children – between four and 17 years old at the time – born between 2006 and 2020 and diagnosed with asthma or an airway allergy. They followed these over 24 months until 2024 to track asthma outcomes, drawing records on diagnoses, emergency visits, prescribed medications, and asthma control test and spirometry tests from linked data in the Swedish National Patient Register, Prescribed Drug Register, and National Airway Register.
In Sweden, registration in the National Cat Register has been mandatory since 2023 for all pet cats born after 2008. For each child, the authors noted whether the parental household had at least one cat in 2023, as was true for 9.4% of the children.
Cats don't worsen asthma in kids
The results showed that there was no significant association between exposure to pet cats and asthma outcomes. For example, moderate-to-severe asthma – based on prescribed asthma medications – occurred in 9.6% of the cat-exposed children and 10.1% of the non-exposed children. Asthma ‘exacerbation’ (also known as an attack or flare-up) occurred in 3.3% of the cat-exposed children and 3.5% of the non-exposed children.
Among a subset of 1,428 children for whom asthma control and lung spirometry data were available, 97 (6.8%) lived with cats. There were no significant differences between the two groups in two common measures of lung function.
“One possible explanation is that cat allergen exposure is very common, even outside the home. Children who do not have cats at home may still be exposed in shared environments such as schools or public transportation, which could explain why we didn’t see a difference,” said Putri.
“While these large-scale findings provide valuable insight, we lacked data on which allergens the children were sensitized to, and because the National Cat Register is relatively new, some children living with cats may have been misclassified as unexposed,” she cautioned.
Journal
Frontiers in Allergy
Method of Research
Observational study
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
Living with cats does not worsen asthma in children, suggests study
Article Publication Date
10-Jun-2026
COI Statement
J.R.K. reports advisory board fees from Novartis and ALK, nonfinancial support from Thermo Fisher Scientific and institutional fees from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals outside the submitted work. The other authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Cuddling cats might make us feel worse when under stress
Researchers find more interaction with pets during stressful moments may not help stress-reduction but – in some cases – intensify negative feelings
Researchers just got one step closer to solving the age-old question: whether cats or dogs make better pets. A team in the Netherlands set out to better understand the nuances and underlying mechanisms behind the positive influence of pet ownership on owners’ emotional well-being. They also examined if the beneficial influence of pet interaction is specific to either species and found tentative evidence of a difference in how interacting with cats and dogs affects stressed owners. They published their findings in Frontiers in Psychology.
“Our findings indicate that stress-buffering is not the mechanism causing momentary emotional well-being when interacting with a pet. Interaction with either species did not act as a buffer for negative emotions,” said corresponding author Dr Mayke Janssens, an assistant professor of psychology at The Open University. “In cats, we even observed that a higher level of interaction was associated with a stronger link between stress and negative emotions in owners.”
Each to their own pet
After registering for the study, participants received 10 app notifications per day over five consecutive days that prompted them to complete a questionnaire about how they currently felt, what they were doing, and if they were around and interacting with their pets. These almost 8,000 real-time data reports provided a moment-to-moment database of pet-owner interactions which can help gain a more fine-grained understanding of how companion animals may influence people emotionally in everyday contexts, the team said.
The results showed that, in general, interacting with pets resulted in positive owner emotions, and that in moments during which interaction levels were higher, people experienced more positive and less negative feelings. These findings were the same for dog and cat owners.
“Dog owners were probably more likely to identify as ‘dog people,’ whereas cat owners were more likely to identify as ‘cat people,’” said first author Dr Sanne Peeters, a researcher at The Open University pointed out. “It’s possible that this owner-pet ‘match’ partly explains why the findings were so similar for dogs and cats.”
Stress busters?
Next, the team investigated whether interacting with a pet can decrease the negative impact of stress more than simply being in the presence of one. They found that if owners interacted with their pets when stressed, it did not protect against the negative effects of stress on mood.
“The positive effects of pet interaction on well-being appear to be genuine, but they don’t seem to happen because pets help people handle stress better at the exact moment the stress occurs,” Janssens said. “Interacting more intensively with the companion animal did not provide additional emotional benefits beyond those that may arise from the animal simply being present.”
This indicates that a mechanism other than stress buffering – an effect that mitigates the negative impact of stress – might be responsible for the beneficial effect of pet interaction. The exact mechanism has not yet been identified as it may differ between contexts in which humans and animals interact.
“It could be that interacting with a pet provides a sense of companionship and that pets help people feel more connected and less alone, which in turn could contribute to improved emotional well-being,” said Janssens.
Cat vs dog
One surprising, species-specific effect emerged. If stressed cat owners interacted with their cats, the interaction did not help lessen their negative emotions – on the contrary: it made owners experience more intense negative feelings.
“One speculative explanation is that because interactions with cats are often more passive and less demanding in nature, a higher level of interaction might be more emotionally evocative. This might not match the need for support in stressful moments,” Peeters pointed out.
There is no definitive explanation to date and the team said that their findings should be interpreted with caution. The cat owner sample in the study was small – smaller than the dog owner sample – and the association between cats and stressed owners wasn’t consistently observed across analyses.
Among dog owners, pet-owner interactions did not intensify the negative emotions owners felt in stressful situations – although they did not improve them either.
But does this mean that some pets are better than others?
“I wouldn’t say that one species makes a ‘better’ pet than the other,” concluded Peeters. “Instead, it’s more likely about owner personality and preference. The main conclusion is that interacting with dogs and cats appears to provide similar emotional benefits.”
Journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Human-animal interaction: understanding the role of dog and cat interactions in emotional well-being
Article Publication Date
16-Jun-2026
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