Babies can benefit from a daily dose of everyday germs says a new study from Northwestern University. Such exposure might even protect them from cardiovascular disease as adults. The study sought to understand how microbial exposures early on in life may affect inflammatory processes related to age-related disease in adulthood. It found that inflammatory systems may need a higher level of exposure to common everyday bacteria and microbes to guide their development.

 

“In other words, inflammatory networks may need the same type of microbial exposures early in life that have been part of the human environment for all of our evolutionary history to function optimally in adulthood,” says Thomas McDade, lead author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

 

Using data from a longitudinal study of Filipinos, the researchers looked at how early-life environments affect the levels of C-reactive protein production, an integral part of immune response. They used the protein as a predictor of heart disease, with higher blood concentrations indicating greater risk. Children raised in the Philippines who suffered from many more infectious diseases as infants and toddlers than their American counterparts were found to have lower concentrations of the protein in their blood relative to the Americans. The Philippines also has relatively low rates of obesity and cardiovascular diseases.

 

“In the U.S we have this idea that we need to protect infants and children from microbes and pathogens at all possible costs,” says McDade. “But we may be depriving developing immune networks of important environmental input needed to guide their function throughout childhood and into adulthood. Without this input, our research suggests, inflammation may be more likely to be poorly regulated and result in inflammatory responses that are overblown or more difficult to turn off once things get started.”