But the how and why of this remained a mystery, until now.
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The researchers examined children from two communities: the Amish and the Hutterites. But the results were still not clear due to other major differences between the children who had more asthma and those who had less. But only 5.2% of Amish children have asthma. Other studies have found rates of about 5 percent in Amish school-aged children versus up to about 20 percent in Hutterites and 10 percent for USA kids.
Researchers discovered that the difference came from the type of dust that was inside their homes which for the Amish was richer in microbial products.
After Indiana, the team moved to South Dakota, to the Hutterites. And that theory just got a boost by scientists studying traditional farming communities.
A new study of Amish and the similar but less-known Hutterite communities has yielded a surprising bit of new insight into the way asthma works-and how our efforts to fight it may actually be hurting us. Families are large, and mothers nurse their children for an extended period of time. Children are not much exposed to tobacco smoke and vaccination rates are high. The Amish rely on horses and oxen, while the Hutterites have adapted mechanized farm equipment. The Hutterites live on large, industrialized communal farms. In the United States, farm animals have been found to help farmers beyond the field.
The American Amish and Hutterite communities were established by immigrants from Central Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries.
However, Professor Chatila added that the study also left “several questions unanswered”.
The study found that six of the Hutterite children had asthma, which came to 20%.
The researchers looked at blood samples from 30 kids from ages 7 and 14 from the Amish community, and 30 kids of the same age range from the Hutterite community. “All that might be important stimuli to develop an immune system that’s protective against asthma”.
Blood tests showed the white blood cells in Amish kids are more implying a stronger immune system.
Upon examining gene expression, the researchers found that genes that worked in innate immunity were more active in the Amish children than in the Hutterites.
“Exactly what’s in the dust, we don’t know”.
The Amish and Hutterite children ate similar diets, had similar lifestyles and nearly identical ancestries – the two communities originated from German-speaking alpine regions of Europe just 50 miles apart. The levels of certain kinds of toxins were close to seven times higher in Amish dust than in Hutterites’. The mice who were pretreated with the Amish dust, however, did not oblige, suggesting somehow that exposure had somehow protected them. And these mice enjoyed no protection from the Amish dust, the study found. The Hutterite dust did not do the same.
The researchers repeated the experiment with a different group of mice that lacked key genes involved in innate immunity. By contrast, the Amish use horse-drawn plows like they did 150 years ago and barns are often located near their homes as their children have daily exposure to farm animals.
Previous research has shown that growing up on a farm seems to reduce the chance of getting asthma.
“Long-term, low-level activation of innate immune cells and possibly T-cell-related immune regulatory mechanisms may contribute to the protective effects of the Amish farm dust against asthma”. Some protection might even happen during a mother’s pregnancy.
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“We hope our findings will allow the identification of relevant substances which will open the way to new strategies to prevent asthma and allergies”, said Erika von Mutius yet, professor at Munich University Hospital, Germany, also study co-author.
