Sucking Your Baby's Pacifier Reduces Allergy Risk, Study Says

A new study suggests that babies whose parents sucked their pacifiers were less likely to develop conditions like asthma and eczema later in life.

"It's really an interesting study, because it supports the theory of the hygiene hypothesis," said Dr. Samuel Friedlander, an allergy specialist at University Hospitals in Cleveland.

"It's a theory that states that our world is too clean. The immune system is like an army, and if the army doesn't have anything to fight-like germs-it fights allergens."

Researchers in Sweden monitored 174 babies and parents over several years, testing them for allergies, eczema and asthma and found that almost half of the parents involved in the study used their mouths to occasionally clean off their babies' pacifiers.

The results showed that those babies whose parents sucked their pacifiers were less likely to develop asthma and eczema by the time the infant reached 18 months of age.

The researchers, from the Sahlgrenska Academy of Göteborg University, concluded that the risk for asthma and eczema was reduced in babies whose parents sucked their pacifiers because they were being exposed to bacteria in the saliva, which then stimulated the babies' immune systems. Researchers also observed a trend toward reduction in allergy risk as well.

As the babies grew older and reached 36 months of age, eczema protection was the only advantage found to occur from the practice of using saliva to clean a baby's pacifier.

However, some experts, like Dr. Erick Forno, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, warn parents against enacting the saliva-cleaning method for their babies' pacifiers solely based on this study because the sample size was small and it does not account for long-term effects of bacteria exposure in babies.

Friedlander also noted that this study does not imply causation, only association — something parents should keep in mind when reading about the study.