Developmental factors associated with risk for atopic disease:
implications for vaccine strategies in early childhood.
Holt PG, Rowe J, Loh R, Sly PD.
Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, and Centre for Child Health
Research, The University of Western Australia, P.O. Box 855, Perth,WA 6872,
Australia. patrick@ichr.uwa.edu.au
There is growing interest in the potential interactions between infant
vaccination and risk for development of atopic disease. The aspect of this issue
which has dominated this debate concerns suggestions that infant vaccination may
stimulate allergic sensitisation. These suggestions derive from retrospective
epidemiological analyses and will remain speculative unless they can be
confirmed in prospective studies, particularly as conflicting findings have been
reported. However, there is a potentially more important issue surfacing in this
debate, which entails the converse situation, i.e. that genetic risk for atopy
influences capacity to respond to vaccination during infancy. Support for the
latter possibility comes from recent studies on the role of developmental
factors which determine immune competence during infancy, and attendant risk for
inflammatory and infectious diseases. The relevant findings are reviewed briefly
below.
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