Thumb sucking and nail biting not key to preventing child allergies

Conclusion This study does not provide good evidence that thumb sucking or nail biting have any effect on a child's likelihood of developing allergies. Overall the results give a mixed picture. Although children who sucked their thumb or bit their nails were slightly less likely to have a reaction to the skin tests, when the habits were looked at individually only thumb sucking was linked to a skin test reaction at 13 – and neither habit individually for skin tests at 32. There were also no clear links for any specific allergic reaction – and no links at all with reported asthma or hay fever. So this doesn't give a clear answer of whether these habits are linked with allergy risk or not. Further important limitations include: The subjective nature of the parental reports. Parents were asked whether their child "not at all", "somewhat" or "certainly" sucked their thumb or bit their nails. The researchers then compared children for whom the parents replied "certainly" with the other children. However, there is likely to be a wide range and frequency of habits among children for whom parents give the different responses. For example, a child who sucked their thumb every now and again – some parents could call this "somewhat" while others could say "certainly" because they see them do it. The skin tests may indicate sensitivity but it's difficult to tell from this how much the individual child would be...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Pregnancy/child Heart/lungs Source Type: news