The hygiene hypothesis postulates that an environment with a high incidence of infectious
diseases protects against allergic and autoimmune diseases, whereas hygienic …

OBJECTIVE: To examine the mechanisms whereby allergen exposure through the
epidermis could initiate systemic allergy and predispose individuals to the development of 1 …

Background. Declining family size is one factor that has been proposed to contribute to
increasing asthma and hay fever prevalence, but its relative importance has not been …

Increased awareness of asthma in society and altered diagnostic practices makes
evaluation of data on prevalence change difficult. In most parts of the world the asthma …

In recent decades it has become routine to describe asthma as an atopic disease. A
theoretical paradigm has evolved in which allergen exposure produces atopic sensitisation …

Objectives The reason for the Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP) is the lack of
epidemiological studies with a broad range of health indicators. Furthermore, in Germany …

Several epidemiological investigations concerning indoor environments have indicated that"
dampness" in buildings is associated to health effects such as respiratory symptoms, asthma …

Abstract Background The Hygiene Hypothesis (HH) attributes the dramatic increase in
autoimmune and allergic diseases observed in recent decades in Western countries to the …

Background Several surveys in children and adults have shown significantly lower
prevalences of asthma and allergic diseases in eastern Europe than in western countries. In …

The prevalence of allergic diseases has been on the rise for the last 200 years, when hay
fever, an easy and obvious-to-recognize illness, was virtually unknown in Europe and North …