Parents who suck on their child's pacifier to clean it may also be reducing their child's risk for allergies, a recent study suggests.
According to the study published in Pediatrics, at 18 months, children whose parents reported this behavior were less likely than those whose parents cleaned the pacifier in other ways to have asthma and eczema. At 36 months, this association remained for eczema but not asthma, the researchers found.
"Exposure of the infant to parental saliva might accelerate development of a complex oral/pharyngeal microbiota that, similar to a complex gut microbiota, might beneficially affect tolerogenic handling of antigens by the oral/pharyngeal lymphoid tissues," Bill Hesselmar, MD, PhD, of Queen Silvia Children's Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden, and colleagues, wrote.
Study limitations included small sample size and the difficulty of diagnosing asthma in early childhood. Further, larger studies are needed to replicate the findings in older children.
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