Scientists sniffing out the Western allergy epidemic

One in three of us is allergic. From grass pollen to latex, peanuts to pets, allergies send 20,000 of people in England to hospital every year.

But generations before did not suffer from this epidemic, so what is it that's making us so allergic in our modern world?

Many theories have come and gone over the years, but now scientists think they may have discovered what's to blame - and BBC Two's Horizon has put this theory to the test.

Every one of us is covered head to toe with bacteria, and intriguingly scientists believe these microscopic bugs are the key to explaining why we are becoming more allergic.

Families under the microscope

The bacteria that cover our skin, line our mouths and fill our guts not only outnumber our own cells by about 10 to one but may play a vital role in training our immune systems. Changes to our lifestyles are influencing these microorganisms, and allergies are the consequence.

To see if this theory played out in the real world, Horizon put the lives of two allergic families under the microscope.

In one of the families, eight-year-old Joe suffers from severe asthma, hay fever, eczema, and nut, pet and dust mite allergies.

In the other, four-year-old Morgan's list of allergies is seemingly endless. Along with severe eczema and hay fever, he is allergic to dairy products, nuts, soya, kiwi fruit, avocado, banana, latex, cats, dogs and horses.

Both families gamely agreed to provide bacterial swabs of their skin, guts and even their homes in the hope they might offer clues about why they suffer from allergies.

The results were incredible. Like most of us in the Western world, the families had far fewer types of bacteria living in and on them when compared with people in traditional tribes in parts of the developing world. One hunter-gatherer community was found to not only have a higher diversity of bacteria, but only one in 1,500 suffered from an allergy - compared with one in three in the UK.

Life in the West appears to be changing our bacteria and susceptibility to allergy. But what is it about the Western lifestyle that is to blame?

There are likely to be many culprits, but a big factor could be how we are bringing up our children.

Today a quarter of babies in the UK are born by Caesarean section. That is a significant statistic in light of a Norwegian study that found Caesarean babies were 52% more likely to suffer from asthma than those born vaginally.

(BBC News)

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