24 Feb Study Finds Fewer Childhood Allergies In Homes Where Dishes Washed By Hand

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Bill Hesselmar
University of Gothenburg
Sweden

MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Dr. Hesselmar: The hygiene hypothesis is the background for this study, and the hypothesis states that children’s immune system need to be stimulated by bacteria and microbes to mature in a proper way prevent the children from developing immune mediated diseases such as allergies. There are increasing support for the hygiene hypothesis, with less allergies found in children from milieus with a rich microbial exposure such as: growing up on a farm or in a developing country, in children with many siblings, and after vaginal delivery as compared to caesarean section. Even though these findings are interesting from a theoretical point of view, they can’t be use in primary prevention since you can’t recommend anyone to live by a farm. We are investigating if there are harmless “microbial sources” in different daily life-situations that are good enough to stimulate children’s immune system. So far we have observed two such possible sources, the sharing of children’s pacifier (Pediatrics 2013) and hand dishwashing (this study). These are, however, only observational data – we have only found an association between hand dishwashing and a lower risk of allergy, we don’t know for sure that the lower risk of allergy was just because of the hand dishwashing. So far we regard it as an “interesting observation”, which need to be confirmed in new studies before any general conclusions could be made.

The main findings was a lower risk of allergy (Odds Ratio 0,57) in children from hand dishwashing families as compared to children from families who use machine dishwashing.       

MedicalResearch: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?

Dr. Hesselmar: It is yet to early to give any “take away messages”, but the results are in line with the hygiene hypothesis and hopefully, they might be used in primary prevention in the future – if the results have been confirmed in new studies.

MedicalResearch: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Dr. Hesselmar: I think it would be interesting to test these type of findings in small high quality studies were you can have a good control of exposure (bacterial load on cutlery, pacifiers, spoons, feeding bottles etc.), and a very good control on outcome parameters such as allergy diagnoses, the immune response, and changes in oral and gut microbial flora.

Citation:

Allergy in Children in Hand Versus Machine Dishwashing

Bill Hesselmar, Anna Hicke-Roberts, and Göran Wennergren

Pediatrics peds.2014-2968; published ahead of print February 23, 2015, doi:10.1542/peds.2014-2968 

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Bill Hesselmar (2015). Study Finds Fewer Childhood Allergies In Homes Where Dishes Washed By Hand 

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Last Updated on September 17, 2015 by Marie Benz MD FAAD