Owning a dog may prevent childhood allergies

by Bethany Sanders (Subscribe to Bethany Sanders's posts) May 4th 2008 10:00AM

When it comes to avoiding allergies, my kids weren't dealt a good genetic hand. I have asthma, and my husband has fairly severe seasonal and year-round allergies. Needless to say, we're hyper alert when watching for signs that they're developing allergies. So far so good.

According to MSNBC, maybe we should thank our dog. A recent study of 9,000 children found that having a dog in the home during infancy reduces the risk of developing allergies, asthma, and eczema. Though no one is exactly sure why, experts theorize that when kids are exposed early on to germs that the dog carries in the house on their fur and paws, their immune systems become less sensitive to things like pollen and other inhaled allergens.

Though previous studies have also found that having pets in the home can have a protective benefit, this study is considered more reliable because of the way it was structured.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to give my dog a milk bone for all of her "hard work."

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Comments (4)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

karen 5-04-2008 @ 10:55AM

i don't buy it. i myself have pretty bad asthma and allergies, both get worse each year. frankly i was just waiting for my son to get it because there was no way i couldn't have passed it along. sure enough when he was 5, asthma reared it's ugly head followed by allergies. i was also diagnosed at age 5. however, we had a dog and two cats in the house when he was an infant. the dog acted as his personal body guard and one cat wouldn't take "no you can't sleep in the crib" as an answer (said cat now sleeps on his pillow at night, my son is 7), so both were around him a lot. asthma rates are up, i know this because i am a respiratory therapist who works in a children's hospital. my personal opinion, rates are up because of pollution, and the overly anal parents who raise their kids in a sterile environment and there isn't really anything you can do to prevent it.

Meagan 5-04-2008 @ 12:48PM

I'm with you Karen. I remember this article: http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Health/2006/08/29/dog_smog_linked_to_asthma_in_children/5036/
I'm pretty much convinced that researchers haven't a clue what they're talking about. I'm going to have pets because I want pets, and not worry about whether it causes or prevents asthma and allergies.

Ethel 5-04-2008 @ 5:11PM

Well Karen and Meagan, if you understood statistics you'd know that individuals are going to be found everywhere along a statistical curve. Meaning you as an individual easily can buck the freaking curve but as a group we fit. More then that, if you studied science you'd know that you can find many studies to disprove one study pretty much no matter what unless it's chemistry or physics For the rest of us who do study science, we spend a lot of time arguing among us and proving each other wrong.

Meagan 5-04-2008 @ 11:18PM

As a matter of fact I do understand statistics and understand that they can prove and disprove all sorts of things depending on how you read them. Scientists appear to change their mind about general health trends every five years or less, and honestly it's usually not the scientists that are the problem, it's usually the journalists reporting on the studies that don't actually understand the info.

Actually, I'll be perfectly honest, I'm just feeling pissy because I feel like you were talking down to me, but if you were genuinely trying to be helpful rather than condescending, I apologize.

My point, badly expressed, wasn't meant to be that researchers are idiots, it was that when you get one article telling you that dogs cause asthma and within a couple years, another telling you that dogs help prevent asthma, the information becomes entirely useless for anything beyond momentary interest. And yes, I do understand the difference between correlation and causation, and that neither of these articles is claiming that dogs cause either one direction or the other.