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Aetiology/Harm
Cohort study
Early exposure to dogs and farm animals reduces risk of childhood asthma
  1. Iny Jhun1,
  2. Wanda Phipatanakul1,2
  1. 1Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  2. 2Division of Allergy and Immunology, Department of Pediatrics, Boston's Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  1. Correspondence to : Wanda Phipatanakul, Division of Allergy and Immunology, Department of Pediatrics, Boston's Children's Hospital, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA; wanda.phipatanakul{at}childrens.harvard.edu

https://doi.org/10.1136/ebmed-2015-110373

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    Commentary on: Fall T, Lundholm C, Örtqvist AK, et al. Early Exposure to Dogs and Farm Animals and the Risk of Childhood Asthma. JAMA Pediatr 2015;169:e153219.

    Context

    Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases of childhood. The risk of developing asthma is associated with environmental exposures, including tobacco smoke, air pollution, dust mites, endotoxin and farm animals.1 A lower prevalence of asthma among children in farm environments supports the hygiene hypothesis on the role of childhood exposure to microbes in developing a more favourable immune system. The effect of exposures to domestic dogs has been less clear. Fall et al undertook a nationwide study to investigate the association between early exposures to dogs as well as farm environment and risk of childhood …

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    Footnotes

    • Funding NIH K24 AI 106822.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.