BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Would you like allergies with that C section?

New born delivery baby photo

Although winter is annoyingly cold, at least there are some upsides, Christmas, hot coco, and a break from allergy season. For some people,the months from March to September can be horrible…if they have allergies. Their bodies feels sickly, their noses feel itchy, and their snot is icky. The loud sneezing can be so embarrassing, and they begin to wonder what they did to deserve this cruel and unusual punishment? NOTHING! If you are one of those people, don’t feel bad, it isn’t YOUR fault. Like most things in life, you can blame it on your parents. For keeping you too clean?

Scientist in Denmark have related the amount of allergies people have to the lifestyle they had growing up. According to studies done at Gentofte Hospital, the more babies and infants are introduced to bacteria at a young age, the more likely they won’t be as allergic to things.  “Reduced diversity of the intestinal microbiota during infancy was associated with increased risk of allergic disease at school age..But if there was considerable diversity, the risk was reduced, and the greater the variation, the lower the risk.” said Gentofte Hospital consultant Professor Hans Bisgaard.

The time to being exposing babies starts right at birth and up to three months later. Wait, does this mean after birth we should make babies visit EVERY wing in the hospital.

Stranger, the fact someone has allergies could rely on how they were delievered. In the womb, the infant is protected by the mother’s immune defences. As an infant is delivered it is surrounded by new bacteria. A study showed, that those babies who were born vaginally, and were exposed to all the bactieria in the mother’s rectum,  have much less allergies than the babies from a C section who weren’t as exposed to the bacteria in their mother.

However, Professor Bisgaard isn’t stopping his research at connecting early life factors to allergies, he has also connected it to asthma and hay fever. Bisgaard’s continued research might be able to tie diseaseas such as obesity and diabetes to another early life factors as well.

Who knows what other things we’ll be able to fault are parents with in the future?

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3 Comments

  1. sar418

    Wow! That’s so weird! I have horrible allergies most of the year, but they are the worst from February to September. I wasn’t born by C-Section, but being the first child, my parents kept me completely sterile and protected from bacteria. I definitely blame my parents for not introducing me to bacteria, good and bad, as a child, as the reason for my allergies. A studied showed that 15% of children born by a planned C-section had celiac disease, whereas the risk for emergency C-section and vaginally born babies was 0%. The reason is because emergency babies are exposed to probiotics present in the birth canal. http://glutendoctors.blogspot.com/2012/02/celiac-disease-risk-why-emergency-c.html

  2. jackalantern926

    Hey sweetasglucose! I thought that being able to blame parents for allergies was interesting, so I did some research. Did you know that there’s actually a gene controlling allergies? It’s called the FCER1A gene, and it controlls IgE antibodies, which regulate allergic reactions. Check out the link below, if you want to learn more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080822085111.htm

  3. aminoalix

    This is a really interesting topic, as I have never learned much about how allergies are given, received and understood. However, after reading your article, I looked up what the most common allergies are in the world and tried to think about why. I thought that you would maybe like to take a look out of curiosity: http://www.chaimedia.com/list/332.html. I would have thought it was the peanut allergy, but it is actually hay fever! Who knew?

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