Newborns who live in a home with cats or dogs appear to be less likely to develop food allergies, according to the findings of a large study. The benefit holds even if the exposure is during fetal development when a pregnant mother lives with pets.
The effect in the study was modest but statistically significant: Exposure to dogs or cats during fetal development or the first few months of life lowered the odds of a later food allergy by about 14 percent. The benefit was strongest when the dogs were kept indoors and when the exposure was during both fetal development and infancy.
Earlier studies reached similar conclusions, but the new study from Japan, involving more than 65,000 infants and their parents, is by far the largest to date. Like other studies, this one could not prove that pets themselves lower the risk of a food allergy. It could be that something else associated with pet ownership, such as lifestyle or genetics, could be causing the apparent association.
But pediatricians who specialize in the study and treatment of allergies said the results look reassuring for pet owners.
“The finding that exposure to dogs and cats is related to less food allergy seems pretty solid and agrees with several prior studies,” said James Gern, professor, and chief of the Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Gern, who published a paper in 2004 showing that dog ownership reduces the risk of all kinds of allergies, said the new study “adds to the growing literature that contacts with pets could have many health benefits for children. In addition to food allergy, other studies have found lower rates of atopic dermatitis, wheezing illnesses, respiratory allergies, asthma, and increased psychological well-being.”
The new study, published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, was led by Hisao Okabe of the department of pediatrics at Fukushima Medical University. She and colleagues analyzed data for the Japan Environment and Children’s Study, a nationwide study of all pregnancies between January 2011 and March 2014. Information was obtained from medical records and self-administered questionnaires. The researchers examined children’s risk of developing food allergies up to age 3.
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