Hold the Hand Sanitizer?
Allergies are less common in children exposed during infancy to farm animals and bacteria. In fact, children of mothers who were exposed during pregnancy to farm animals or cats are born with an immune system protection against atopic dermatitis, according to a study released November 26, 2010 by the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology. (Atopic dermatitis is an itchy and painful skin rash caused by an inherited hypersensitivity to allergens.) Further, children who grow up with older siblings, who may transmit bacteria to them, are less likely to develop autoimmune diseases and allergies. These facts add even greater weight to the well-accepted Hygiene Hypothesis, which strongly suggests that the modern era’s obsession with sanitized environments, and early-life protection against bacteria, deprives a child’s immature and still-developing immune system from experiencing an appropriate level of bacterial exposure. This may cause an immune system over-reaction throughout life.
Can Past Surgery Cause CJD, Alzheimers or Parkinsons?
A jarring statistical study concludes that with few exceptions, those who become afflicted with sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) do so 20 years after some type of surgery.
Caused by an infectious protein called a prion, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or CJD is the brain-wasting and always fatal disease that slowly causes holes in the brain, making it sponge-like. It is the human variant of mad cow disease, and scrapie in sheep, and is also called a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy or TSE.
Heredity can be a cause but most cases are called sporadic, meaning their cause is unknown.
The reliability of the data prompted researchers to conclude there is a cause-and-effect relationship between CJD and surgery. Without ruling out blood transfusions as the route, the team suggested that prions may enter the body through the central or peripheral nervous system, conceivably from sanitized but reused equipment.
Unlike germs, prions are not alive and have no DNA, making them impossible to destroy by traditional methods such as heat or radiation.
But the nervous system route has greater implications: if CJD is externally caused by surgery, other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s could also be transmitted through surgery and lie dormant for decades before striking.
This study was released in advance of publishing in the print version of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry but the full article is available online now at: http://bit.ly/bxamv6.