{"id":2160,"date":"2023-03-31T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/?p=2160"},"modified":"2023-04-09T19:57:45","modified_gmt":"2023-04-09T19:57:45","slug":"do-pets-reduce-your-childs-allergies-new-study-says-yes-also-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/pet-care\/do-pets-reduce-your-childs-allergies-new-study-says-yes-also-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Pets Reduce Your Child’s Allergies? New Study Says “Yes! Also: No!”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The hygiene hypothesis, even if you don\u2019t know it by name, is probably a familiar concept. The idea is that the rise in allergies observed in wealthy countries is tied to a decline in rural living, and lack of childhood exposure to various animals, infections, and allergens. This doesn\u2019t mean children should be outside all day playing with cow pies, of course. Hygiene is important and protects us from numerous maladies. However, the idea that there is a downside to being exposed to a less diverse collection of microbes as we develop is appealing, and many researchers feel there is merit to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now, more than 30 years after the hypothesis\u2019 popularization, research from the Fukushima Medical University is providing data to back up this concept\u2026 well, kind of<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers took data from 100,000 pregnancies between 2011-2014, and compared the food allergy rates of kids born into households with pets compared to those that were not. As you might expect, kids in houses that had dogs and\/or cats showed less sensitivity to foods like eggs, milk, nuts, soybeans, and wheat. But don’t get smug, pet owners! As is so often the case, it\u2019s not so simple as \u201ckeep a pet and reduce your child\u2019s odds of suffering from a food allergy.\u201d Dogs and cats aren\u2019t the only animals kept as pets in Japan. Terrapins are also a common household pet, but children with terrapins showed no different rate of allergies than kids raised without pets. Further, keeping hamsters seemed to\u00a0increase<\/em>\u00a0the rate of nut allergies for kids. Given how terrifying nut allergies can be, such findings could give expectant parents pause when it comes to raising their kids alongside hamsters!<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Hamsters, and the fact that many pet-owning families in Japan live in the countryside conspired to confound this study’s findings.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Fortunately for the hamster\u2019s reputation, these findings are still in the early stages, unclear in many cases, and easily confounded. But nevertheless, as an organization that supports pet ownership as well as rigorous science, it is exciting to see the hygiene hypothesis pursued with real data (even if the final outcome isn’t as pro-pet as we\u2019d hoped)!<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Resources<\/strong>
\u2605     Associations between fetal or infancy pet exposure and food allergies: The Japan Environment and Children’s Study<\/a>
\u2605     (2013) Want to Fight Allergies? Get a Dirty Dog<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The hygiene hypothesis, even if you don\u2019t know it by name, is probably a familiar concept. The idea is that the rise in allergies observed in wealthy countries is tied to a decline in rural living, and lack of childhood exposure to various animals, infections, and allergens. This doesn\u2019t mean children should be outside all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,11],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2162,"href":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2160\/revisions\/2162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naiaonline.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}