Can House Dust Explain Why Amish Protected From Asthma?
New research in two farming-based religious communities that shun modern society may provide clues about how to protect kids from asthma
Aug. 3, 2016, at 5:08 p.m.
By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer
CHICAGO (AP) — Forget Fluffy and Fido. Bessie the cow just might make a healthier pet.
That idea stems from new research in two farming-based religious communities that shun modern ways but have dramatically different childhood asthma rates. The goal was to find an explanation for why asthma is so uncommon among Amish communities, where children run barefoot in dairy barns and farm fields, but much higher in the other group.
Blood samples, house dust and mice experiments revealed some tantalizing clues, suggesting something in the dust was protecting the Amish children.
The study was published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine . It involved 60 school-aged children — 30 each from an Amish community in Middlebury, Indiana, and from a Hutterite colony near Mitchell, South Dakota. Amish and Hutterites both originated in Europe, share old-style Protestant beliefs and lifestyles and have similar genetic ancestry.
But Hutterites live on large highly industrialized communal farms, use modern agricultural machinery, and children are more isolated from livestock. By contrast, the Amish have family-run farms, they use horse-drawn plows, their barns often are located near their homes and their children have daily exposure to farm animals, the researchers explained.
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