Dirty Farm Air May Ward Off Asthma In Children

sciencehabit writes: For researchers trying to untangle the roots of the current epidemic of asthma, one observation is especially intriguing: Children who grow up on dairy farms are much less likely than the average child to develop the respiratory disease. Now, a European team studying mice has homed in on a possible explanation: Bits of bacteria found in farm dust trigger an inflammatory response in the animals' lungs that later protects them from asthma. An enzyme involved in this defense is sometimes disabled in people with asthma, suggesting that treatments inspired by this molecule could ward off the condition in people.

Comments

Goin' to the farm

[fustakrakich]

Gonna breathe some of that dairy air!

Re:Goin' to the farm

[Z00L00K]

I wouldn't call the farm air dirty, it's still cleaner than the city air we have.

The difference is that air on farms have a wider variety of bacteria (most of them harmless to humans with a working immune system), and asthma is an auto-immune disease caused by the immune system not being busy enough working on real threats and instead starts to react on all kinds of things that it shouldn't.

Re:Goin' to the farm

[Teun]

Having grown up on a farm I can vouch that farm air isn't dirty but at times it might appear to be rich to those not used to nature.
Statistically there is an interesting correlation between the incidence of asthma and those not having been exposed to nature, this study re-enforced this relation.
Similar relations exist between kids playing in the dirt (sand/soil) and those with less allergies.

It's about time to further investigate such.

Makes sense

[RogueWarrior65]

When you consider that the small pox vaccine originated from cow pox and current society's obsession with anti-bacterial everything.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I let my kids play in the dirt when they were very young, very rarely do they ever get sick. Then I see people trying to live in a sterile environment, and guess what? Always sick.

Re:Makes sense

[MacTO]

If you're cycling 50 km/day, it is likely that you are making ongoing lifestyle choices that contribute to your health. You probably don't have to attribute those choices to genetics or micro-organisms.

Re:Makes sense

[Trepidity]

There's quite a bit of writing about this, generally termed the hygiene hypothesis. Some is based on good research, some not.

Re:Makes sense

[Oligonicella]

Don't attach too much but don't downplay their contribution either. Remember Jim FIxx the author of The Complete Book of Running. Heart attack while jogging at 52. Genetics and microbial exposure are part of your health makup.
.

Re:Makes sense

[Mashiki]

There's no supposing on cowpox and people contracting it, milkmaids did get cowpox often. My mother has the scars on her hands from it from when her family lived in east-germany and they were farmers. But you're right on the rest, though there is enough circumstantial evidence to show that living in a sterile environment and not being exposed to contagions does make your immune system weaker.

Re:Makes sense

[Ol Olsoc]

Explain the cowpox/smallpox thing. Is there actually a correlation there or did you just pull some scienceism out of thin air? Seriously, WTF? Dirty farm air and the development of vaccination have nothing to do with each other unless you want to really reach. I suppose cowpox was contracted by farm workers so there's your brain's connection.

People who contracted cowpox - which is a rather minor illness, were immune from smallpox, which is a major issue. And with the symptoms of smallpox being rather dramatically evident, people made the connection quickly, since the milkmaids and people around the cows had nice skin, not something that looked like the surface of Mercury.

And stay out of the silo!

[AndyKron]

And stay out of the silo!

Doesn't jive with the NPR story I heard today

[darthsilun]

The researcher interviewed on the NPR story said <paraphrase>living on a farm during the first year of life reduced the likelihood of having allergies later in life</paraphrase>

He went on to say that living on a farm later in life did nothing, it had to be in the first year.

This is news?

[argStyopa]

I would gasp in surprise, but I was raised on a farm so I'll just breathe normally.

Re:It's cars

[FranTaylor]

For a start ban fast food drive throughs. Silly as it sounds card idling there are a large part of the smog problem.

it's easier to make cars smarter and it's impossible to make people smarter and expecting otherwise is a sure symptom of insanity

Speaking as an asthmatic

[ihtoit]

I can't agree more with this. Countryside air is a lot easier to deal with than city air. The biggest mistake I ever made was moving back to the city. I should've stayed on the coast, where the offshore wind was clean and crisp, onshore blew over a dairy farm and while it smelled like a cow's bum, at least I could sleep through the night without bolting upright at Dark O'clock for a blast on the salbutamol..

Re:It's cars

[stephanruby]

For a start ban fast food drive throughs. Silly as it sounds card idling there are a large part of the smog problem.

Or we could just require fast food restaurants to go even faster, so that no cars idle at all.

The payment could just be made through something like FastTrack (or the equivalent in your country or state). You could pre-order your food before you even enter your car. In the end, you would just go to the drive thru to pick up your food and drinks. That would end up saving a ton of emissions and time.

Re:The cause of asthma is stress

[ledow]

We also administer adrenaline when your heart stops.

Has nobody thought that the cause of heart disease might be stress?

Fucking idiot. You can't work backwards from a treatment to work out the cause like that without doing a lot of research, and that will tell you the real cause.

Asthma is a lung condition. The "treatment" is to induce a panic in the body (without a panic in the patient, hopefully) to open up the airways, increase the bloodflow and let them breathe and get oxygen where it's needed because the lungs can't do it enough on their own. It's literally about allowing them to live through the attack, not curing the cause.

Asthma is also entirely linked to environmental causes, with air particulates and quality being one of the main factors implicated (i.e. sterility and/or pollutants - air fresheners and aerosols are highly implicated too). It's almost certainly an immune response to that environment too.

Children today are no more stressed than for the centuries they were shoved up chimneys to clean them, "to be seen and not heard" or just plain abused as a matter of course. A prescribed education in a child-safe environment for 18-20 years followed by 40 hours a day of work is fucking NOTHING compared to previous generations - especially pre-industrialisation - and they had significantly less asthma even adjusted for lifespan.

Nice to know.

[nospam007]

Nice to know. If in the future, somebody asks me: "Have you been raised in a barn?" when I failed to close the door, I can say: "Yes, that's why I don't have any Asthma."

It's actually not hard to make people smarter

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Average intelligence of people worldwide today is higher than it was.

1) Better nutrition
2) Better medical care
3) Reduced disease burden
4) Elimination of environmental toxins (lead for one!)

So no, it's actually not impossible AT ALL to make people smarter, though it may be impossible to make an individual such as yourself smarter..... But who knows, in a few years there might be a pill.

--PM