(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Pregnant mothers who spend time on farms may be protecting their newborns from developing allergies.

Researchers in Germany recently studied 18 farming mothers and 59 non-farming mothers and discovered that exposure to farms affects a baby’s T regulatory cells. These cells are now believed to suppress immune responses, thus maintaining immune system homeostasis and contributing to healthy immune development.

“We found that the babies of mothers exposed to farms have more and better functioning regulatory T cells,” Bianca Schaub, M.D., lead researcher at University Children’s Hospital in Munich, Germany, was quoted as saying. “The effect was strongest among those mothers who entered barns or drank farm milk.”
 

In the study, expression of T regulatory cells and associated genes were found to be significantly higher in blood drawn from the umbilical cords of babies whose mothers spent time on a farm.

These findings support the shift away from attributing allergic diseases solely to an imbalance between anti-allergic Th1 cells and pro-allergic Th2 cells. It is possible that T regulatory cells may prevent an allergic response in its early stages by suppressing Th2 cells, Dr. Schaub explained.

“It is a long way off, but these findings may one day hopefully help researchers to develop an effective preventive strategy, perhaps even a vaccine, against allergic diseases,” Dr. Schaub said.

SOURCE: American Thoracic Society’s International Conference, Toronto, May 16-21, 2008