HONG KONG (Reuters) – Infants treated with common pain reliever “paracetamol” may have a higher risk of developing eczema and asthma, at the age of 6 or 7, a large study covering children in 31 countries has found.

The study was published in the journal Lancet along with two different studies, which reveal that runny noses and wheezing in early days of life may be clear sign of asthma.

In the first study, researchers analyze data of more than 205,000 children and came to know that paracetamol use in infancy was associated with a 46 percent higher risk of asthma by the time the children were 6 or 7 compared to those never exposed to the drug.

Use of paracetamol in the last year has increased asthma risk by 61 percent, while high dosages of once a month or more in the past few years, raised the risk by three folds worldwide.

According to a hypothesis, paracetamol reduces antioxidants in the body. Some scientists think antioxidants, which stop free radicals from damaging body, can minimize the risk of cancer, heart disease and other ailments.

“Paracetamol can reduce antioxidant levels and … that can give oxidative stress in the lungs and cause asthma,” one of the researchers, Richard Beasley at the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, told Reuters.

In a supplementary comment, Suzanne Lau of Charite University Medicine in Germany wrote, “These findings identify a population at risk of chronic obstructive airway disease in early adulthood, and they already showed a predisposition during preschool years.”

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