4 ms·

(2020) > Intervention daycares received segments of forest floor, sod, planters for growing annuals, and peat blocks for climbing and digging. They covered th

(2020) > Intervention daycares received segments of forest floor, sod, planters for growing annuals, and peat blocks for climbing and digging. They covered the backyars with forest elements, and asked the children to play with it. > The 28-day-long intervention that included enrichment of daycare center yards for microbial biodiversity was associated with changes in the skin and gut microbiota of children, which, in turn, were related to changes in plasma cytokine levels and Treg cell frequencies. These findings suggest that the exposure to environmental microbial diversity can change the microbiome and modulate the function of the immune system in children. Specifically, the intervention was associated with a shift toward a higher ratio between plasma cytokine IL-10 and IL-17A levels and a positive association between Gammaproteobacterial diversity and Treg cell frequencies in blood, suggesting that the intervention may have stimulated immunoregulatory pathways. Doesn't this just say that being exposed to more, and perhaps different, microbials will trigger your immune system? There are lots of words, but my casual eyes don't read anything that would be non-obvious. Specifically, nothing in this study seems to look at long-term effects. It was a 28 day study without later follow-up. Is there a well-established link between what they showed and lasting immune system changes? (Making the headline _technically_ true.)

hmottestad 2y ago
A lot of studies are like this. They build on existing ideas and push the boundaries in a very specific direction. Here they show that adding a forest floor environment to a kindergarten will increase certain immune related markers in the blood of the children playing there. They managed to design the study so that you can’t say “oh, but children playing in kindergartens close to forests probably don’t live in cities, so they probably don’t get exposed to as much pollution”. Other studies will find links between those immune related markers and the development of autoimmune related disease, or someone will do a statistical analysis on kids that grew up in kindergartens close to forests to see if their incidence of autoimmune related disease is lower.
- FredPret 2y ago
  Humans and their lives are outrageously multi-faceted and thus nearly impervious to statistical analysis
  - ungamedplayer 2y ago
    By definition isn't that the case with everything in an uncontrolled system?
Zenzero 2y ago
> Doesn't this just say that being exposed to more, and perhaps different, microbials will trigger your immune system? There are lots of words, but my casual eyes don't read anything that would be non-obvious. There are many studies which evaluate things that seem obvious. These are necessary to support less obvious conclusions in other studies. If your paper is going to make the claim that IL10 upregulation in children as a consequence of environmental stimuli is linked to some disease process, one of the critiques will be if you can even establish that IL10 upregulation reliably occurs. If your paper can cite a well-performed study evaluating that prior, it strengthens the conclusions of your own study.

hmottestad 2y ago

A lot of studies are like this. They build on existing ideas and push the boundaries in a very specific direction. Here they show that adding a forest floor environment to a kindergarten will increase certain immune related markers in the blood of the children playing there. They managed to design the study so that you can’t say “oh, but children playing in kindergartens close to forests probably don’t live in cities, so they probably don’t get exposed to as much pollution”. Other studies will find links between those immune related markers and the development of autoimmune related disease, or someone will do a statistical analysis on kids that grew up in kindergartens close to forests to see if their incidence of autoimmune related disease is lower.

FredPret 2y ago
Humans and their lives are outrageously multi-faceted and thus nearly impervious to statistical analysis
- ungamedplayer 2y ago
  By definition isn't that the case with everything in an uncontrolled system?

Zenzero 2y ago

> Doesn't this just say that being exposed to more, and perhaps different, microbials will trigger your immune system? There are lots of words, but my casual eyes don't read anything that would be non-obvious. There are many studies which evaluate things that seem obvious. These are necessary to support less obvious conclusions in other studies. If your paper is going to make the claim that IL10 upregulation in children as a consequence of environmental stimuli is linked to some disease process, one of the critiques will be if you can even establish that IL10 upregulation reliably occurs. If your paper can cite a well-performed study evaluating that prior, it strengthens the conclusions of your own study.