Too clean, or not too clean - A review of the Hygiene Hypothesis

Tuesday, 15 July 2008 02:24

A review of the 'hygiene hypothesis' is currently available free to download from www.blackwell-synergy.com. The ‘hygiene hypothesis’ proposes that a lower incidence of infection in early childhood, resulting from too clean an environment, could be a cause of the recent rapid rise in atopic disorders.

This review examines a wide range of factors which might have resulted in altered exposure to infection such as clean water and food, sanitation, antibiotics and vaccines, birth practices, as well as incidental factors such as the move from farm to urban living. However, the increase in allergic disorders does not correlate with the decrease in infection with pathogenic organisms, nor can it be explained by changes in domestic hygiene. It appears that more fundamental changes in lifestyle have led to decreased exposure to certain microbial or other species that are important for the development of immunoregulatory mechanisms. 

Reference: Bloomfield et a. 2006 Too clean, or not too clean: the Hygiene Hypothesis and home hygiene. Clinical and Experimental Allergy, Vol 36 pp. 402–425.