Probiotics may protect some children from allergy

Monday, 30 March 2009 20:11

A research team from Finland has found that giving probiotics to pregnant women and their babies is unlikely to help prevent the children developing allergies, except those who had been born by caesarean.

The rise in childhood allergies may be due to a lower exposure to bacteria, stopping the immune system from developing as it should. Allergic children have often been found to have different set of bacteria in their intestines, specifically less lactobacilli and bifidobacteria.

The researchers designed a study to test whether these missing bacteria could be added through probitic supplements. They gave either probiotics or a placebo to 1,223 mothers whose infants were thought to be at high risk of allergies, for the last month of their pregnancy. Their babies were given the probiotics and a prebiotic from birth until they reached six months.

When they reached five years of age, the children were examined for symptoms of eczema, food allergy, allergic rhinitis, and asthma. The researchers concluded that, except in caesarean-delivered babies, no allergy-preventive effect is extended to age five years by perinatal supplementation with probiotics.  However, they did not rule out the possibility that stronger and longer stimulation of the infant immune system, possibly by varying the strains of bacteria, may result in better allergy-preventive effects.

The study is published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.