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The more other children toddlers are exposed to at day care, up to a certain point, the lower their risk of developing asthma, new research shows.

The findings provide more evidence to support the “hygiene hypothesis,” or the idea that early exposure to immune system stimuli like germs and animals — and other kids –can help ward off asthma, the study’s lead author, Dr. Matthew Gurka of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, told Reuters Health.

But right now, he added, the findings shouldn’t be used to guide parents’ decisions on whether or not to put their children in group day care. “Parents shouldn’t stress about this,” he said.

Gurka and his team looked into whether early child care experience might influence asthma risk by reviewing long term data from the National Institute of Child Health and Development’s Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, which followed more than 1,000 children born in 1991 up to age 15.

The current analysis included 939 children and their families. Three percent of the children had asthma persistently since age 3 years, while another 16 percent had developed asthma by age 15. About 1 in 5 of the children were cared for at home by their parents up to age 3, while another 1 in 5 started center-based child care between 16 months and 3 years of age. Fewer than 10 percent started at a day care center as infants, or before 15 months of age.

The number of other kids the study participants were exposed to during infancy had no influence on their risk of persistent or late-onset asthma. But it did matter during toddlerhood (age 16 to 36 months).

“The fewer the children exposed to as toddlers, the higher the probability of persistent or late-onset asthma by age 15,” the researchers report in the latest issue of The Journal of Pediatrics.

For every additional other child in his or her primary care setting, a child’s risk of asthma decreased, up until age 9. Asthma risk began to increase again for toddlers in day care with 10 or more other kids, suggesting that there may be a “threshold for this protective effect.”

When Gurka and his team took the number of respiratory infections a child had into account, the effect remained, suggesting that there was something else about being in day care with several other children that was protective against asthma. Just what this might be is unknown, the researcher said in an interview, but possibilities include gastrointestinal infections or even just germs in general.

What’s new about the findings, Gurka noted, is that they point toward toddlerhood as being the time when exposure to immune-stimulating factors such as germs, pets and other children is most protective against asthma. “No one’s really been able to pinpoint an exact time period when it really matters,” he said.

In a commentary on the study, Dr. John T. McBride of the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine in Rootstown notes that while the symptoms of asthma are uniform, it’s becoming clear that the causes can vary widely, with genetics being most important, and environmental factors less so.

“Although it is useful to have positive data to share with parents who have no choice but to depend on child care,” he adds, “I am hesitant to make strong recommendations about child care for individual children.”

Gurka agreed, and said his findings will be most important in helping guide further investigations. “This is just a great springboard for future research to hone in on differences in child care environments” and asthma risk, he concluded.

A baby gate is essential for the parent of any toddler who is able to crawl or walk near stairs or other areas that may be unsafe.

The Nemours Foundation offers these suggestions to help you purchase a safe baby gate:
Choose a gate that mounts to a door frame with hardware. There mustn’t be any gaps where tiny fingers could get stuck.
Don’t use a gate that mounts to the door frame with pressure. A child could push it open and fall down a flight of stairs, for example.
Never use a gate that swings out at the top of a staircase.
Make sure there is a maximum gap of 2 inches between the bottom of the gate and the floor.
Any nonflexible barriers should have a gap of no more than 2 3/8 inches between them.
Make sure the gate doesn’t have any sharp parts that could hurt a child.
The gate shouldn’t have any areas that a child could stick a foot into and attempt to climb.
When the gate reaches about three-quarters of the infant’s height (at about age two years), stop using the gate.

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The study compared the projected brilliantly health effects in 2030 of true alternative urban pretty land sometimes transport scenarios in behalf of London, England, and Delhi, I.: business-as-usual (no greenhouse unusually gas the catastrophic decline policies); motor vehicles w. mark down carbon emissions; amazing increased on foot and cycling (vigorous quietly travel ) plus less motor vehicle traffic; and well a combination of amazing increased walking/cycling and low-emission vehicles.

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“Important brilliantly health gains and reductions in CO2 emissions can be achieved excitedly through replacement of urban trips in internal motor vehicles w. vigorous quietly travel ,” wrote James Woodcock, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues. “Technological measures fall back vehicle pollutants might smartly reduce emissions, but then the brilliantly health a powerful impact would be ideal smaller .”

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