What factors do we know are related to the development of childhood allergies? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Following 125,000 children as they began to eat a wider variety of foods from infancy seems to show that early introduction of peanut helped many avoid development of peanut allergy, a recent study concluded. Robert Wood, a childhood allergy expert at Johns Hopkins, says this is just one of a number of observations regarding factors related to the development of childhood allergies.

Wood: If your mother has antibiotics at the very end of pregnancy, if the baby gets antibiotics shortly after birth or in the 1st 6 to 12 months of life, if you were born by C-section you have a higher risk of allergy. If you have a dog in the home you have a lower risk of allergy. Should every baby get a bath right after they're born, they're just to leave them dirty might you be able from a preventative standpoint to enrich somebody with a healthier microbiome and maybe prevent allergy.     :28

Wood notes that overall, allergies including those to foods are increasing in childhood, and many studies are aiming to understand why. Early introduction to peanut may just be one part of a constellation of exposures that helps a child’s immune system develop in a healthy way. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.