Acute infections, infection pressure, and atopy

Clinical and Experimental Allergy : Journal of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology
M PaunioO P Heinonen

Abstract

During the recent years, a new theory postulating that lack of early childhood infections would increase the prevalence rate of allergies has rapidly gained momentum. This hygiene hypothesis has been widely disseminated to the general public and it has been suggested that vaccinations would accordingly indirectly increase rates of atopy. We thus investigated associations between acute infections, infection pressure (i.e. number of daily child contacts) and atopy in one of the largest population-based medical surveys ever published in the medical literature. Almost all Finns born between 1976 and 1984 and a sample of older teenagers aged up to 19 years (n=5 47 190) were vaccinated and questioned to establish clinical history of mumps and rubella and manifestations of atopy (rhinoconjunctivitis, eczema, and asthma) in 1982-1986. A subsample (n=37 733) including all those subjects who were vaccinated during the first 2 months of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) programme were also queried information about upper respiratory infections (URIs) and infection pressure. Crude and adjusted prevalence ratios of atopy among those with infectious disease history compared with those without it were calculated. The risk of URI and a his...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jan 14, 2009·Trends in Immunology·J P McFaddenI Kimber
Apr 14, 2007·Clinical and Experimental Allergy : Journal of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology·S A BremnerD G Cook
Feb 13, 2008·Pediatric Allergy and Immunology : Official Publication of the European Society of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology·Roos M D Bernsen, Johannes C van der Wouden
Aug 23, 2012·Clinical and Experimental Allergy : Journal of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology·A K Kukkonen, M Kuitunen
May 2, 2007·Current Opinion in Infectious Diseases·Jan Bonhoeffer, Ulrich Heininger
May 28, 2009·Deutsches Ärzteblatt International·Burkhard SchneeweissBrigitte Keller-Stanislawski

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