Spring is coming and with it pollen and allergies. According to the experts gathered at the Congress of the Spanish Society of Clinical Immunology, Allergy and Pediatric Asthma (SEICAP), andl excessive hygiene in the western world, coupled with pollution and changes in eating habits, is increasing the number of allergic children every year.
According to scientists, one in five children suffers from some type of allergy, and only in the case of asthma, the number of those affected has doubled in the last three decades. “When children develop in an aseptic environment, with the absence of germs, surrounded by excessive hygiene, with so much sterilization, vaccinated with everything and without risk of infections, it causes their immune system not to activate the defense mechanism but the one that favors allergies ”, warns Marcel Íbero, president of SEICAP. A part of the immune system develops thanks to a “memory” of infections, the mechanism on which vaccines are based. To do this, according to a study published by the journalImmunity, it’s necessary thatchildren are exposed to germs and pathogens, they are stained, wounded and sick. In an environment more exposed to germs, “the TH2 immune response with which children are born and that favors allergies becomes TH1, which is what activates the defense to be able to fight infections”, explains Íbero.
According to Luis García Marcos, from the Pediatric Allergology Service of the Virgen de la Arrixaca Hospital in Murcia, “Changes in the lifestyle of people living in developed countries have modified theirhygiene habits, eating habits or even the decoration of the houses. All this set of causes, together with pollution, cause changes in the immune system of children from the womb of the mother, whose defense response becomes weaker and favors the appearance of allergies ”.
