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Health & Fitness

Should you clean your babies pacifie by sucking on it????

 OK, some of the readers may find this gross, but on May 9, 2013, the American Academy of Pediatrics journal PEDIATRICS reported that parental sucking of infant pacifiers as a cleaning technique may be associated with a reduced risk of allergies, asthma and eczema in their children at the age of 18 months: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2013/04/30/peds.2012-3345 The prevalence of the above immune/allergy related conditions has increased greatly over the past century, particularly in affluent countries.  Allergies develop from the failure to develop a tolerance to otherwise harmless inhaled or swallowed proteins.  Instead, an immune response develops in response to further contact with these proteins. One hypothesis regarding the cause of the increasing incidence of allergy related disorders is that as overall hygiene has improved, babies are no longer exposed to germs, and therefore do not develop a tolerance to many environmental factors. It has been noted that vaginal delivery, which leads to infant exposure to multiple microbes, is associated with a lower risk of allergy development as compared to cesarean section.Our mouths and saliva contain a complex mix of 100s of different bacteria. In theory, parents who clean their children’s pacifiers by sucking on them may expose their children to their own oral bacteria, allowing the children’s immune system to get used to these bacteria, and to avoid immune system over responsiveness (and, hence, allergies).The study in question was performed in Gothenburg, Sweden; parents were asked if they cleaned pacifiers by boiling water, tap water or sucking. In addition, all children were evaluated by an allergist at the ages of 18 months and 3 years.  Children whose parents cleaned their pacifiers by sucking were less likely to have asthma, eczema and allergies at 18 months. The protection against eczema persisted at the third year.This study is consistent with other data which show that some degree of exposure to germs at an early age benefits children, and that too “sterile” an environment may backfire and prevent the immune system from adjusting normally to a world full of germs and foreign proteins.So is the message that we should all begin cleaning infant pacifiers through sucking??  Certainly not during time of illness (fever, flu, other infections)!  This issue is something that you should review with your pediatrician.

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