year of lockdown is putting kids at risk of allergies

“eat dirt!” is a phrase i remember well. it was in the  title of an article  published by harvard university environmental health professor, dr. scott t. weiss, and it captured my attention while i was learning about an immunological concept known as the “ hygiene hypothesis .”

i like the way researchers led by microbiologist sally f. bloomfield expressed it in  their study :

the immune system has many potent mechanisms for killing pathogens. it  needs to be carefully regulated  to ensure it can eliminate dangerous microbes from the body without causing excessive harm to our own tissues. the interactions we have with our environment early in life are essential for our immune systems to learn to differentiate between safe and dangerous disease-causing microbes.

our bodies are covered inside and out with micro-organisms that, under normal circumstances, happily co-habitate with us and promote a healthy immune system. if infants, toddlers and young children are not sufficiently exposed to the microbial world around them, their ability to properly  regulate their own immune systems can be compromised .

to return to the computer analogy, the data that gets uploaded into the software are incomplete. this lack of data can cause the immune system to struggle to differentiate between what is truly dangerous and should be eliminated, and what is not dangerous and should not be responded to. in plain terms, this scenario can  promote allergies ,  asthma  and  autoimmune diseases .

specifically, we need to practise proper hygiene in the context of trying to prevent infectious diseases, but still allow our immune systems to interact with safe and essential microbes. many middle-income countries have seen an  epidemic  of allergic diseases over the past several decades. this is, in part, due to increased  urbanization  which is akin to living in “concrete jungles” with reduced exposure to the natural environment.

societies have also adopted behaviours that  limit exposure  to microbes. the overuse of  antibiotics  exacerbates the problem by non-discriminately eliminating good microbes along with bad ones.

now think about  government-led responses  to  covid-19 , which was  declared a pandemic by the world health organization  on march 11, 2020. the lockdown and restriction policies that have been enacted to help prevent the spread of covid-19 contradict the recommendations to ensure proper immunological development in children.

data suggest that sars-cov-2  does not represent a greater danger to children than the  annual flu . yet  social interactions of children have been severely limited , including removing them from schools. most of their extracurricular activities have been cancelled and they have been discouraged from leaving their homes. even the air they breathe is often  filtered by masks and there is prevalent use of hand sanitizer .

in short, most covid-19 policies have maximized the potential for children to develop dysregulated immune systems. as a viral immunologist, i was not overly concerned about this in the early stages of the pandemic when “temporary” measures were put in place to “ flatten the curve .”

for example, the problem would likely be more prevalent in infants than toddlers. although the  human immune system is largely mature  by approximately age six, some important components are still developing into adolescence. as such, the only people who can be certain that current isolation policies will have no negative impact on their immune system’s ability to self-regulate are adults.

interestingly, it has been noted that the new  messenger rna-based covid-19 vaccines  that are packaged inside liposome nanoparticles  might be contraindicated  for some individuals with a propensity towards severe allergic responses. ironically, we may be setting up many of our youth to develop hypersensitivities to this vaccine technology when they are older.

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year of lockdown is putting kids at risk of allergies

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