Daycare can be a breeding ground for viruses.
For most kids this might mean they get sick and spend a couple of days at home.
For babies with a chronic lung condition caused by premature birth, it can put them at risk for serious respiratory infections, according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
"Daycare can be a breeding ground for viruses and puts these already vulnerable children at risk for prolonged illness and serious complications from infections that are typically mild and short-lived in children with healthy lungs," said lead investigator Sharon McGrath-Morrow.
The results of the study, funded by the Thomas Wilson Sanitarium for Children and the National Institutes of Health, were printed in the October issue of Pediatrics.
Researcher interviewed the parents of 111 children age 3 and under with chronic lung disease of prematurity. They asked them about their child's daycare attendance, infections, symptoms, emergency room visits, hospitalizations and use of medications.
Children with chronic lung disease who attended daycare were nearly four times more likely to end up in the ER with serious respiratory symptoms than those who didn't attend daycare. They were twice as likely to need corticosteroids and twice as likely to need antibiotics.
The children in daycare were also three times more likely to have breathing problems at least once week.
Investigators want pediatricians to make parents more aware of the risk because serious complications caused by these infections can land kids in the hospital. Repeated infections can lead to lifelong respiratory problems and chronic lung damage.
The researchers advise parents to keep children with chronic lung disease out of daycare for the first two years of life.
Chronic lung disease develops in about a quarter of babies born at or before 26 weeks of gestation, according to the researchers.