First-Year Allergen Exposures May Reduce Later Risks

First-Year Allergen Exposures May Reduce Later Risks

Exposure during the first year of life to specific allergens and bacteria, surprisingly, may reduce recurrent wheeze and thwart genetically predisposed allergic disease or asthma, according to an article published online June 4 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

The more a baby is exposed to in their first year, the less chance that later exposure will lead to an allergic reaction.

Susan V. Lynch, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues evaluated the outcomes of 3-year-olds in the Urban Environment and Childhood Asthma (URECA) study who were born in Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; New York City; or St. Louis, Missouri.

URECA is a longitudinal birth cohort study to examine the effects of environmental exposures on children born to poor urban parents, at least 1 of whom has an allergic disease or asthma. Researchers recruited 560 families from urban areas with more than 20% of the residents below the poverty line between February 2005 and March 2007.

The new report is the evaluation of exposure to sensitizing allergens — cockroach and mouse, in particular — on the entire cohort at 3 years of age. During the process of this investigation, the researchers also conducted a nested case-control study on whether early-life exposure to microbes in house dust in the children’s homes leads to development of allergy and wheezing.

Source J Allerg Clin Immunol. Published online June 4, 2014.

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