Australian view of allergy prevention strategies

Two Australian allergy specialists have published an in-depth review of strategies that may help to prevent or reduce the development of allergies. Sue Prescott and Anna Nowak-Węgrzyn of the School of Paediatrics and Child Health Research, University of Western Australia, Perth look at focus areas for long-term strategies to address the increasing rates of food allergy and eczema, plus asthma and respiratory allergic diseases.

The paper is freely available for download.

At the same time as we are seeing a rise in allergic disease, the authors draw attention to an increase in many other immune diseases, which suggests that the developing immune system is highly vulnerable to modern environmental changes. They propose these strong environmental pressures may be one reason why simple allergen avoidance strategies have not been successful.

More recent strategies aimed to prevent or reduce allergy have focussed on balancing out the more hygienic ‘Westernised’ living conditions and consequent disruption of microbial exposure using probiotic and prebiotic supplements. Supplementation with specific immunomodulatory dietary nutrients such as polyunsaturated fatty acids and other nutrients such as antioxidants, folate, and vitamin D are other strategies currently being studied widely. Useful tables are provided in the review summarising the current knowledge of the role of supplements in allergy prevention.

Background information is provided on early immune development and a significant proportion of the paper looks at strategies related to pregnancy and lactation. While most of the current allergy-prevention strategies aim to ‘restore optimal conditions’, the authors wonder whether it will actually be possible to define what is ‘optimal’ in the face of complex environmental and developmental interactions.

Reference: Prescott & Nowak-Węgrzyn. 2012. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism. Vol 59 Suppl 1. pp 28-42.