- What causes allergies in children?
- Can date of birth affect allergies?
- Birth among pollen - does it matter?
- Allergy resistance develops during pregnancy
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Does allergy depend on the month of birth? Someone may find this question frivolous. Are we looking for the causes of allergies in the star system or in the horoscopes? It turns out that the date of birth may affect the susceptibility to various types of allergies, and modern medicine seems to take the subject quite seriously.
In a world where up to a third of the population may have problems with allergies, medicine tries to find its causes in various ways. In recent years, scientists have become interested in allergy susceptibility and its relationship to the date of birth of a child. See if the allergy is related to the month of birth.
What causes allergies in children?
Allergy is probably the most common civilization disease in the modern world. It is estimated that even every third person is affected by it. Rarely, it threatens human life, but it makes life extremely difficult, causes a lot of limitations and makes it impossible to forget about yourself.
Due to the multiplicity of its forms and non-specific symptoms, it is a disease that is difficult to diagnose, as it is easy to confuse it with other diseases, such as a viral infection.
What is most sad, sometimes it cannot be cured. Modern medicine focuses mainly on symptomatic treatment and some kind of prophylaxis.
Can date of birth affect allergies?
In search of the causes of allergies, scientists have started research onthe influence of the month of the child's birth on the tendency to allergy.
The results are not entirely clear, because there are many factors contributing to allergies. It is known that the risk of allergy increases if parents are allergic - one parent increases the risk of allergy in their offspring by 20-40 percent, and two - by as much as 40-60 percent.
But not only genetic determinants are taken into account, but also the place of birth and the course of pregnancy. There are other studies that lead to the conclusion that the month of birth affects the risk of developing allergic symptoms and atopic diseases.
Birth among pollen - does it matter?
Various teams of scientists, in completely different climatic zones, conducted research related to this issue. Swedish tests published by the National Library of Medicine prove that he is allergic to pollenInhaled and allergic rhinoconjunctivitis was less common in children born in spring than in other seasons of the year.
Why?Probably the organisms of infants produce antibodies against allergies immediately after birth.In turn, children born in the winter months (i.e. when nothing is dusting and we stay at home more often), much less often suffer from house dust mite allergies.
The thesis about lower susceptibility to inhalation allergies in children born in the pollen season seems to be confirmed by experiments conducted by Japanese researchers. A study to assess the correlation between birth month and sensitization to allergens or the occurrence of an allergic disease was conducted in 755 Japanese children aged 12-13 years.
The date of birth of children was compared to the flowering time of Japanese cedar, perhaps the most common allergen in the country. The results seem similar to those in Europe.
Allergy resistance develops during pregnancy
Observations about the "seasonality" of food allergies are more difficult to explain. Finnish scientist Dr. Lennart Nilsson, who conducted research on the correlation between allergies and date of birth, also concluded that allergies to egg white and milk, as well as the symptoms of atopic dermatitis caused by them, are more common in babies born between September and February. Unfortunately, he could not give a reason for this increased risk. Some specialists explain this by the course of pregnancy.In their opinion, immunity to allergy, or the lack of it, develops already in utero.As evidence, they provide the results of observations of doctors from Finland.
In a large study conducted by prof. Bengt Bjorksten from the Karolinska Institutet (Solna Medical University) showed that the highest risk of sensitivity to birch allergens was observed among children born in the months before the pollen season.
Similarly, the strongest allergies to mugwort were observed in children born in April and May, i.e. also before the pollen season of this plant.
The researchers' task: women whose early pregnancy fell during the pollen season develop IgG pollen antibodies that inhibit allergy in their babies born a few months later.
This theory is supported by studies in rats and a recent discovery in umbilical cord blood, which showed that the course of pregnancy, including maternal immune responses, i.e. IgG produced (and then transferred through the placenta), may affect development of specific immunity toallergens in children.
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