The pre-school can protect children against asthma and allergies

There is a researcher at the Institute for labour market and education policy evaluation (IFAU) and Uppsala university, which has compared the health outcomes for all of the more than 300,000 children when they went on pre-school aged 2-5 years, and when they came up in the age of ten.

the Children were born between 1995 and 2000. When the researchers looked at drug prescriptions and hospital stays when the children were 10-11 years old, they saw that the children who had previously had access to preschool had less and less prescriptions of medications that have asthma, allergies and luftvägsrelaterade problems to do. Compared with the control group decreased prescriptions with between five and six percent.

the pre-school reduces the risk for children to suffer from allergy, asthma, and luftvägsrelaterade problems later in life.

A likely explanation is that children who attend preschool will be exposed to a rich flora of micro-organisms that affect the immune system in this favorable direction, says Anna Sjögren, associate professor of economics at the IFAU and one of the authors behind the report.

the Study has been completed thanks to the reform, which meant that all of the municipalities after July 2001 had to offer the children of the unemployed förskoleplats.

When comparing children before and after the reform saw a difference after the reform had been implemented.

In children who have older siblings, had not the pre-school the same dampening effect against asthma, allergy and luftvägsrelaterade problems later. Photo: Tomas Oneborg

the children had the opportunity to go on the pre-school affected by the infections to a greater degree than those who had not the opportunity.

– During the actual förskoletiden we could not see the drug prescriptions, the children were. The only thing we could watch was if they had been hospitalised. Then we saw something more of the children in the 4-5 years of age, who have access to preschool, was being treated at the hospital for infectious diseases to a greater degree than those who have not had access to preschool, " says Anna Sjögren.

What infections it was we could not see, only that there was an increase in the group of infectious diseases. It is not, therefore, hospitalizations for that they corrupted themselves more, for example, by breaking the leg.

to those children who have older siblings do not have the same beneficial effect of going to preschool when it came to asthma, allergy and luftvägsrelaterade problems.

– The effect, we could only see in those children who had older siblings. A likely explanation is that the children who have siblings already get exposed to a rich flora of micro-organisms in their environment. For them is thus not the difference is equally great.

Children in preschool often play in an environment with many different micro-organisms. Photo: Gorm Kallestad

the so-called hygeine hypothesis, which is based on the idea that children who are exposed to a rich flora of different microorganisms, may also be a stimulation of the immune system. Allergy and asthma are so-called autoimmune diseases associated with the immune system to make.

What it may be for the micro-organisms that might reduce allergies in children have not been able to see in this study.

" Unfortunately, we have no such data. The only thing we can say is that exposure is a possible explanation. But there may be others as well.

" No, we thought preschool would have any significance for the children's health development. There are previous studies that show that preschool can lead to better educational outcomes for children who come from less favourable childhood environments, " says Anna Sjögren.

– We also knew that the children of the unemployed are sick to a greater extent than others. Therefore, we wanted to see if the nursery could affect this and have a role in equalizing children's upbringing.