Farm dust protects children against allergies, asthma: Study
Farm dust seems to protect children against allergies and even asthma, a new study has revealed.
The study published in the US journal, Science, on Thursday has the potential to help health authorities find a vaccine against asthma.
The research examined 2,000 children, who grew up on farms, finding that most of them did not suffer from allergies or asthma.
"At this point, we have revealed an actual link between farm dust and protection against asthma and allergies," said Bart Lambrecht, a professor of pulmonary medicine at Ghent University in Belgium, adding that they also conducted experiments on mice to establish the link.
"We did this by exposing mice to farm dust extract from Germany and Switzerland. These tests revealed that the mice were fully protected against house dust mite allergy, the most common cause for allergies in humans,” he said.
Farm dust "makes the mucous membrane inside the respiratory tracts react less severely to allergens such as house dust mite" due to a protein called A20, the study added.
The A20 protein is produced by the human body when a person comes in contact with farm dust.
The protective effect went away when the A20 protein was inactivated in mice, said Professor Hamida Hammad at Ghent University.
"Discovering how farm dust provides this type of protection has certainly put us on the right track towards developing an asthma vaccine and new allergy therapies," she said.
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