Germs May Be Good For You

Exposing kids to nasty germs might actually toughen them up to diseases as grown-ups, mounting research suggests.

A new study suggests that higher levels of exposure to common everyday bacteria and microbes may play a helpful role in the development of the body’s inflammatory systems, which plays a crucial role in the immune system’s fight against infection.

“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,” said Thomas McDade, a professor of anthropology at Northwestern University and lead author of the study.

The investigation focused on how various early childhood environments affected levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), which rises in the blood because of inflammation. C-reactive protein is also considered by researchers to be a predictor of heart disease, independent of lipids, cholesterol and blood pressure, though the association has been disputed.

While earlier studies have been conducted in relatively affluent settings such as the United States, the researchers were interested in how C-reactive protein production differed in a country like the Philippines, a population with a high level of infectious diseases in early childhood, but low rates of obesity and cardiovascular diseases when compared to Western countries.  Read Article