Want Tots Without Allergies? Try Sucking on Their Pacifiers

Study suggests transferring adult bacteria to infants' mouths through saliva may train immune system to ignore allergens

By Barbara Bronson Gray

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, May 6 (HealthDay News) -- A new Swedish study suggests that parents who want to protect their infants from developing allergies should try a simple approach to introducing their children to the wide world of microbes: Just pop their pacifiers into their own mouths before giving them back to their babies.

Although that may sound disgusting or even risky to some, researchers found that the transfer of oral bacteria from adults to infants seems to help train the immune system to ignore germs that don't pose a threat.

"The immune system's purpose is to differentiate between harmless and harmful," said Dr. Ron Ferdman, a pediatric allergist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. "If your immune system is not presented with enough microbes, it just defaults to doing harmful attacks against things that are not harmful, like food, cat dander or dust mites."

A report released last week from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics showed that the number of American children with allergies has increased dramatically in recent years: about 13 percent have skin allergies and 17 percent have respiratory allergies.

The Swedish researchers set out to learn whether very early microbial exposure during the first months of life affects allergy development. They found that children whose parents sucked on their pacifiers to clean them were less likely to have asthma, eczema and sensitivity to allergens than children whose parents did not clean the pacifiers this way.

The authors concluded that parental sucking of their baby's pacifiers may help decrease the risk of allergy caused by transfer of microbes through the parent's saliva.

For the study, published online May 6 in the journal Pediatrics, 206 pregnant women in Sweden were initially recruited as participants, and 187 of their infants were included in the research. The scientists sought families with at least one allergic parent to see if they could identify a different immune response in the children.

The researchers studied the transfer of microbes in the parents' saliva by fingerprinting bacterial DNA in 33 infants' saliva, of which 21 had parents who sucked on their pacifiers.

A total of 187 babies were followed until the child was 18 months old, and 174 were followed until they were 36 months old. The researchers chose to evaluate the children at those specific points in time because some diseases, such as eczema, develop early in life, said Dr. Bill Hesselmar, an associate professor at Queen Silvia Children's Hospital, in Gothenberg, Sweden.

Introducing solid foods into an infant's diet did not seem to affect the study results, Hesselmar said. "We found differences in the oral microbial flora already at 4 months of age, at an age when most children are still on breast milk."

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9 Ways to Wean a Child Off Thumb Sucking

Your preschooler won't stop sucking his thumb? Help your child kick the habit for good.

Kara Angelone's 3-year-old daughter Addie was a thumb-sucker from day one -- literally. Tucked away in her baby book is an ultrasound image of Addie sucking her thumb in the womb. Now, three years later, she's still not ready to let it go.

"It makes her feel safe and comfortable," Angelone says. "I can tell it helps soothe her because, whenever she feels stressed, in goes the thumb and she calms down in a second."

But should a 3-year-old still be sucking her thumb? Experts in psychology, pediatrics, and pediatric dentistry say there are things parents can do to help their children move past thumb or finger sucking. 

"Sucking is very natural for babies," pediatrician Robert Anderson says. "It's very common for them to use their thumbs or fingers as part of their routine to find comfort and to soothe themselves."

Within the first few months of life, or even sooner, a baby can become a thumb or finger sucker as a way to fall asleep, to calm down, or to just feel good, Anderson says.

At this stage, not only is thumb or finger sucking common, it is considered harmless in terms of a child's growth and speech development. The questions most parents ask themselves, however, is how long should it go on? Should a child still suck her thumb when she is ready for preschool?

"Usually, a child who is in the 2- to 4-year range will start to develop other coping skills beyond thumb or finger sucking, such as language development," says pediatric dentist Mary Hayes.

Hayes says these coping skills replace the need for a child to suck on a thumb or finger. But for some kids, thumb sucking or finger sucking is harder to kick, which could lead to problems for their growing mouths.

"We used to think that as long as a child stopped sucking by the time they developed their permanent teeth there would be minimal impact on the mouth and jaw," Hayes says. "Now, research shows that thumb or finger sucking can have an impact even at a younger age -- as young as 2 to 4 years old."

Hayes, a diplomate and fellow of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, says that the sucking puts pressure on the sides of the upper jaw and the soft tissue on the roof of the mouth. As a result, the upper jaw can narrow, causing the teeth to not meet properly from the top to the bottom. Although this can be fixed with braces, it can also cause speech problems such as a lisp that may need to be corrected in therapy.

The long-term effects of thumb or finger sucking don't stop there. If a child has a cross-bite, a condition in which the upper and lower teeth don't meet properly, it can make it worse. A "thumb hole" in the roof of the mouth, which comes from sucking, can cause the teeth in the back of the mouth to take on the brunt of chewing. This causes an imbalance across the teeth and affects the structure of the mouth and jaw as they are growing with the child.

"The trick is to work with the child to lessen her dependency on thumb sucking or finger sucking before the coping skill turns into a habit," Hayes says.

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