Children who live on farms with dairy cows run one-tenth the risk of developing allergies as other rural children, say researchers at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden. Allergy rates have climbed in recent decades and one frequent explanation is that children are exposed to fewer micro-organism and have fewer infections than in the past, so their immune systems do not develop resistance.
The Gothenburg scientists monitored children until the age 3 to examine maturation of the immune system in relation to allergic disease. All of the children in the study lived in a rural area and half of them on farms that produced milk. The children on the dairy farms had a much lower risk of allergies. Their study appeared online in The Journal of Immunology.