Astrologers have long linked birth months to fortune, personality and life direction, but without much data to back their claims up.
Data scientists, however, recently found a trend that may correlate a person's birth month with risks of developing certain health problems.
Researchers from the Columbia University Medical Center analysed a sample of 1.7 million people from New York City databases, trying to identify patterns connected with more than 1,600 diseases.
The researchers found out that 55 of those diseases were "significantly dependent" on birth month.
For instance, the study found out that babies born in July and October were more prone to asthma. Infants born in November, meanwhile, were found to have the highest risk for developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The research also showed that babies born in March were most vulnerable to heart problems such as congestive heart failure, mitral valve disorder and atrial fibrillation.
October babies were also identified by the study as those with the highest risk of disease, while those born in May had the lowest risk.
How exactly does this connection between birth month and disease risk make sense? The data scientists who conducted the study think the time of the year a baby was born dictates several environmental factors he or she is exposed with during birth and early development.
"Seasonality is a proxy for variable environmental factors present at the time of your birth, and we are learning more about the very large role that environment, and gene-environment interactions, plays in our development," said Dr. Nicholas Tatonetti, the study's lead author.
"When we present these results we are always careful to point out that birth month is a proxy variable for environmental exposures. It is well known that environment can be a very important factor in early development, especially when in the context of some particular genetic variants," he added.
