Barnyard dust offers clue to stopping asthma in children
Scientists say they may have found a sort of magic ingredient to prevent asthma in children: microbes from farm animals, carried into the home in dust.
The results of their research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, were so convincing that they raised the possibility of developing a spray to do the same thing for children who do not have regular contact with cows and horses.
It is a pressing problem because as many as 10.6 percent of grade-school children have asthma, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The new work began when a group of investigators noticed that something peculiar was happening with children from two insular farming groups: the Amish of Indiana and the Hutterites of North Dakota.
None of the Amish children had asthma.
[...] they all had a large proportion of neutrophils — white blood cells that are the immune system’s paramedics.