thumb sucking and immunity
another microbiome article (i realize this is the third in a series of two, but can't help myself). This one looked at the "hygiene hypothesis", which is basically that kids exposed to more microbes early in life have fewer allergies or asthma. this article looked at thumb-sucking, nail-biting and atopic sensitization, also finding that the more the fingers went into the mouth, the fewer had atopic sensitization (see asthma thumbsucking peds2016 in dropbox , or DOI: 10.1542/peds.2016-0443). Details: --the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Heath and Development Study, a population-based birth cohort study of 1037 people (52% male) born in Dunedin (the second largest city in the South Island of New Zealand with 120,000 inhabitants), with followup at ages 3,5,7,9,11,13,15,18,21,26,32, and 38 --at age 5,7,9,11 the parents were asked about the kid's thumb-sucking and nail-biting, along with an estimate of frequency --skin-prick testing was done at age 13 on 724 of th...