Line Your Baby’s Crib with Animal Fur to Cut Risk of Asthma in Childhood Years: Study

Making you infant sleep on animal fur alleviates the risk of asthma in childhood years, finds a study.

Asthma is a serious lung disease that causes frequent episodes of wheezing, breathlessness, severe cough and suffocation. The condition can be prevented with the help of medications and eliminating allergens and dust in the environment that trigger an attack. A new research by the scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München Research Centre in Germany discovered the respiratory disorder can be avoided in infants and newborns by lining their cribs with animal fur for at least three months after birth. The experts looked at the health and birth records of 3,000 babies born in 1998 and also gathered information on their exposure to animal fur after birth.

The participants were followed for almost a decade and nearly 55 percent of them reportedly slept in animal skin mattress till they were three months old. This allayed the possibility of falling prey to allergies, asthma and related conditions.  The risk of this condition occurring at age six was 79 lesser among children who slept on animal fur than those who did not. The risk rate declined to 41 percent when the children were 10 years old.

"Previous studies have suggested that microbes found in rural settings can protect from asthma. An animal skin might also be a reservoir for various kinds of microbes, following similar mechanisms as has been observed in rural environments. Our findings have confirmed that it is crucial to study further the actual microbial environment within the animal fur to confirm these associations," said Christina Tischer, study author and researcher from the Helmholtz Zentrum München Research Centre, reports the Red Orbit news.

The research was presented at the European Respiratory Society's International Congress in Munich.