Children raised in rural environments, who spend a lot of time outdoors with some exposure to animals, grow to have better regulated immune systems than children living in urban environments, a new study has found.
The research led by APC Microbiome Ireland (APC) and University College Cork (UCC) shows that the early development of immune systems is highly dependent on a child’s living environment and lifestyle.
The immune system must learn not to over-respond in early life in order to avoid excessive reactions in later life that can lead to disease.
Study
The study focused on children in South Africa aged from 15-35 months who were living in both rural and urban areas.
The scientists examined how environmental factors are linked with the presence of atopic dermatitis (AD) or eczema.
Researchers found that the immune systems of children living in rural areas possess several ways of identifying and dealing with threats.
During childhood, our bodies develop multiple immune pathways in response to “protective exposures”, such as time spent outdoors and with animals, and “potentially detrimental exposures”, including pollutants and viruses.
The findings of the study support a body of evidence that exposure to certain environmental stimuli and lifestyle factors during childhood can have significant consequences on a person’s short- and long-term health.
The research was conducted by APC Microbiome Ireland and UCC with the University of Cape Town, Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research, Stanford University and Karolinska Institute.
Prof. Liam O’Mahony, APC principal investigator and UCC professor of Immunology, led the study.
“This ‘immunological window of opportunity’ plays a critical role in establishing the limitations and reaction trajectories of our immune system that stay with us for life and influence the risk of immune mediated diseases,” he said.
“These protective and detrimental early life environmental exposures help shape our immune response.
“Growing our understanding of the mechanisms and role of environment on immune development is highly important, and research such as this can help pave the way for new developments in early disease diagnosis and expediting interventions for more specific and safe modulation of immune activity,” Prof. O’Mahony added.