Farms Shield Kids From Bowel Disease

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"You can't make the leap to say that to protect our children against autoimmune disease, we need to take them to farms, because we don't know yet what the [protective] exposure is," said Dr. Peter Mannon, head of the Clinical Inflammatory Bowel Diseases Research Unit at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

"Are you supposed to be exposed to hay? To a particular type of vermin? The rats in barns? It's very hard to know," he said. While there's no reason not to bring infants to more pastoral settings, "I would not guarantee that it is going to add any protection," Mannon said.

Radon agreed that "at the moment, we cannot give direct advice to parents" since the study showed no cause-and-effect relationship, only an association.

And she pointed out that society's obsession with cleanliness does have its rewards. "We should not forget that an improved level of hygiene has relevantly contributed to today's health in industrialized countries," she said.

For his part, Rosh said there might be some virtue in letting kids get a little dirty -- a prescription most youngsters should have no problem with.

"I don't mean that we all have to eat dirt, but if we could isolate what is in it that is good, maybe we'd have a good [IBD] treatment," he said. "These various areas of research are going to unlock the secrets that we need to cure these diseases."

More information

There's more on the hygiene hypothesis at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.