Journal Journal: Clean Living Bad for Proper Immune System Development
On December 2nd, Biology News reported about, at least for pigs, an aseptic environment for the piglet, actually leads to a less healthy individual.
Researcher Denise Kelly (University of Aberdeen, UK) explains that for the study, piglets were divided equally between an outdoor environment, and indoor environment, and one where they were fed a diet high in antibiotics. The outdoor raised pigs intestinal tracts had a significantly higher population of "healthy" bacteria than their indoor raised brethren. Further, the indoor piglets gene expressed more genes for T-cell formation while the indoor raised pigs had more genes related to inflammatory immune response.
Kelly also explains that the pig is a good model for this type of research due to similarities between the organisms found in human and pig guts and their comparable size in organs."
Just recently, Laboratory Equipment has an article about Northwestern University researcher Thomas McDade has found that using long term epidemiological on Filipino's tracking them from in utero through 22 years. This study indicated that exposure to a less antiseptic environment led to adults with lower "C-Reactive Protein" (CRP) a long term health indicator of cardiovascular health. Higher levels of CRP in adults is an indicator for greater risk of heart disease. Comparing the Filipino results to US, the blood levels were roughly 5X less.
What would be interesting is to see if there is also linkage to the increased rate of asthma, which is also a type of inflammatory response gone awry.