Study says rural upbringing better for children’s immune systems

A recent study has discovered that children brought up in rural environments, spend plenty of time outdoors and are exposed to animals, develop better-regulated immune systems compared to their urban-dwelling counterparts.

Research led by APC Microbiome Ireland and 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.

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 virus infections.

The study, which involved South African children aged between 15–35 months living in rural and urban areas, 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. Although there were differences between rural and urban families, the impact on gene expression was less significant than animal exposures and outdoor time.

The findings support 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.

Speaking about the research, 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.”