New Zealand - Prenatal Probiotic Study to Fight Allergies

Citation

(2013), "New Zealand - Prenatal Probiotic Study to Fight Allergies", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 26 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2013.06226eaa.007

New Zealand - Prenatal Probiotic Study to Fight Allergies

Article Type: News and views From: International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Volume 26, Issue 5

Keywords: Prenatal probiotics and allergies, Epigenetic studies in babies, Medical research and allergies

Researchers are looking for pregnant women to participate in a study about the role of prenatal probiotics in reducing allergic diseases such as asthma, eczema and hay fever.

Teams from the University of Otago, Wellington and the University of Auckland School of Medicine are looking for 350 newly expectant mothers from Auckland and Wellington to participate in the “Probiotics in Pregnancy” study.

Thorsten Stanley, a senior lecturer in paediatrics at the University of Otago, Wellington, says GPs should encourage any newly pregnant patients to sign up to participate.

“If you have somebody who’s recently pregnant, ask them if they or their partner has a history of allergic diseases – eczema, asthma or hay fever – and encourage the family to make contact,” Dr Stanley says.

The women need to be less than 16 weeks pregnant to participate, and either they or their partner needs to have a history of allergic disease.

Half the participants will take a Lactobacillus rhamnosus capsule and half will take a placebo containing Maltodextrin, from their first trimester until they finish breastfeeding.

They will be visited by researchers five to six times from the start until the baby turns one.

“Most of them [the babies] will have developed their eczema by that year,” Dr Stanley says.

He says there are no known side effects to probiotics and there are additional health benefits for mothers, including decreasing the chances of vaginal infection and gestational diabetes.

Dr Stanley says: “The rate of allergic diseases is going up at a rate that’s unprecedented and it has become a modern epidemic along with a number of other conditions that are also associated with First World life.

“Something’s gone wrong. We presume it’s something that’s environmental because it’s too rapid to be a genetic thing.

“The cause of the trend is unknown, but one theory known as the ‘hygiene hypothesis’ suggests that by not exposing children to bacteria, their immune systems are unable to develop defences against allergic diseases.”

The increase seems to be worst in English speaking countries, and places far away from the equator, he says.

The study follows on from previous research published in 2008, where 450 pregnant women took one of two probiotics or a placebo from their last trimester until they finished breastfeeding. The child was then given the same probiotic or placebo with milk until they turned two.

Six years on, the children who took L. rhamnosus had half the rate of eczema than those in the other groups.

The researchers now know the importance of selecting the right sub-strain of probiotic, and they have improved the L. rhamnosus strain by making it more potent.

Dr Stanley believes the women in the previous study were too far into their pregnancy to get the best results – the asthma and hay fever of the children was unaffected.

“We’re going to give the probiotics before 16 weeks gestation to see if we can alter the immune response in the baby.”

The project received $1.2 million funding from the HRC along with a grant from Fonterra, who are providing the probiotic. However, Dr Stanley says they need an additional $500,000 in order to study the epigenetics of the babies.

“We would like to study the mechanism that’s going on here – we think it’s epigenetic. No one else has studied this in the world.

“It’s a major problem.”

For more information: www.nzdoctor.co.nz