Kids’ immunity during COVID-19 under the microscope
New findings from researchers have established that all this sanitising and staying inside during COVID-19 is not killing kids’ immunity.
QLD News
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Children living in the overly sanitised times of the COVID-19 pandemic are not at risk of killing off their immune systems, new research has revealed.
A report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology disproves the theory that we are being too clean for our own good.
In medicine, the hygiene hypothesis states that early childhood exposure to particular microorganisms protects against allergic diseases by contributing to the development of the immune system but researchers from the University College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has found four reasons the immune system can remain strong in an ultra clean environment.
Firstly, the microorganisms found in a modern home are not the ones that we need for immunity and secondly, vaccines, in addition to protecting us from the infection that they target, do a lot more to strengthen our immune systems, so we now know that we do not need to risk death by being exposed to the pathogens.
Thirdly, we now have concrete evidence that the microorganisms of the natural green environment are particularly important for our health, domestic cleaning and hygiene have no bearing on our exposure to the natural environment.
Finally, recent research demonstrates that when epidemiologists find an association between cleaning the home and health problems such as allergies, this is often not caused by the removal of organisms but rather by exposure of the lungs to cleaning products that cause a type of damage that encourages the development of allergic responses.
“So cleaning the home is good and personal cleanliness is good but as explained in some detail in the paper, to prevent spread of infection it needs to be targeted to hands and surfaces most often involved in infection transmission. By targeting our cleaning practices, we also limit direct exposure of children to cleaning agents,” the author said.
“Exposure to our mothers, family members, the natural environment, and vaccines can provide all the microbial inputs that we need. These exposures are not in conflict with intelligently targeted hygiene or cleaning,” he said
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