Research has demonstrated the crucial role of a child’s living environment and lifestyle in shaping early life immune development. The study, focusing on South African children, found that rural children’s immune systems develop multiple pathways in response to varied exposures, contrasting with urban counterparts.
Children raised in rural environments who spend a lot of time outdoors with some exposure to animals grow to have better-regulated immune systems than children living in urban environments, a new study has found.
Research led by APC Microbiome Ireland (APC), a world-leading SFI research center and University College Cork (UCC), has shown that early life immune development is highly dependent on a child’s living environment and lifestyle factors. Researchers say that the immune system needs to learn how not to over-respond in early life in order to avoid excessive damaging reactions later in life that can lead to disease.
The study examined how environmental factors are linked with the presence of atopic dermatitis (AD) or eczemaEczema, also known as atopic dermatitis, is a chronic or recurrent inflammatory skin disease. Symptoms include itchy skin; dry cracked or scaly skin, and red or brownish patches of skin.” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{“attribute”:”data-cmtooltip”, “format”:”html”}]” tabindex=”0″ role=”link”>eczema across South African children aged between 15 – 35 months living in rural and urban areas.
Comparing Urban and Rural Immune Responses
Researchers found that the immune systems of children living in rural areas possess several ways of identifying and dealing with threats. Multiple immune pathways are developed in response to early life protective exposures, such as time spent outdoors and time with animals, and potentially detrimental exposures, such as pollutants and virusA virus is a tiny infectious agent that is not considered a living organism. It consists of genetic material, either DNA or RNA, that is surrounded by a protein coat called a capsid. Some viruses also have an outer envelope made up of lipids that surrounds the capsid. Viruses can infect a wide range of organisms, including humans, animals, plants, and even bacteria. They rely on host cells to replicate and multiply, hijacking the cell's machinery to make copies of themselves. This process can cause damage to the host cell and lead to various diseases, ranging from mild to severe. Common viral infections include the flu, colds, HIV, and COVID-19. Vaccines and antiviral medications can help prevent and treat viral infections.” data-gt-translate-attributes=”[{“attribute”:”data-cmtooltip”, “format”:”html”}]” tabindex=”0″ role=”link”>virus infections.
The study also investigated other factors including birth mode and income levels. Rural children were less frequently born via c-section and rural families had lower income levels, compared to urban families in this cohort. However, while these differences were seen between the rural and urban families, their association with differences in gene expression were far less pronounced than the associations with animal exposures and time outdoors.
Long-Term Health Implications
The findings support a body of evidence that exposure to certain environmental stimuli and lifestyle factors during childhood can have significant consequences on a person’s short- and long-term health. The research was conducted by APC Microbiome Ireland and UCC with the University of Cape Town, Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research, Stanford University and Karolinska Institute.
Professor Liam O’Mahony, study lead, APC Principal Investigator and UCC Professor of Immunology, said: “Our study found that many of the important environmental factors were linked with altered exposure to microbes during the first few years of a young child’s life, a crucial stage in shaping a person’s immune system as it is particularly responsive to environmental exposures including infections, nutrition and microbiome.”
“This ‘immunological window of opportunity’ plays a critical role in establishing the limitations and reaction trajectories of our immune system that stay with us for life and influence the risk of immune-mediated diseases,” Professor O’Mahony continued.
“These protective and detrimental early life environmental exposures help shape our immune response. Growing our understanding of the mechanisms and role of environment on immune development is highly important, and research such as this can help pave the way for new developments in early disease diagnosis and expediting interventions for more specific and safe modulation of immune activity.”
Reference: “Rural and urban exposures shape early life immune development in South African children with atopic dermatitis and nonallergic children” by Nonhlanhla Lunjani, Anoop T. Ambikan, Carol Hlela, Michael Levin, Avumile Mankahla, Jeannette I. Heldstab-Kast, Tadech Boonpiyathad, Ge Tan, Can Altunbulakli, Clive Gray, Kari C. Nadeau, Ujjwal Neogi, Cezmi A. Akdis and Liam O’Mahony, 3 August 2023, Allergy.
DOI: 10.1111/all.15832
Source: SciTechDaily
