by BFFF
Nov 18th, 2020
3 mins
BFFF

An unique opportunity has arisen for a study to be undertaken by the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI) and Dublin’s Children’s Hospital at Temple Street to examine whether babies born in Ireland during Lockdown, between March and May 2020, are more or less likely to develop allergies. Most of the babies will have been exposed to better air quality and had less exposure to viral infections during lockdown.

Allergy is described as being the ‘most common chronic disease in Europe’ by the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology with the NHS stating that the number of people developing allergies ‘is increasing every year’. It is thought that this may occur ‘as a result of living in a cleaner, germ-free environment which reduces the number of germs our immune system has to deal with.’.

Once outside the womb the babies’ immune systems should develop after being exposed to life – playing on the floor, getting dirty, exposure to lots of people and lots of different environments.  Professor Jonathan Hourihane, study lead and Professor of Paediatrics at RCSI University and Health Sciences, said, “The outcome of this is usually a stronger immune system, linked to a healthy population of gut bacteria, called the microbiome.”

Professor Hourihane also added that, “We have seen less than half the usual number of attendances at paediatric emergency departments and rates of seasonable influenza and other late spring upper respiratory viruses seemed much lower than usual during this time.”

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