Basic and clinical immunologyFish oil supplementation in pregnancy modifies neonatal allergen-specific immune responses and clinical outcomes in infants at high risk of atopy: A randomized, controlled trial☆
Section snippets
Study design
Allergen-specific T-cell responses in cord blood were compared in fish-oil-supplemented and control groups in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. The number of subjects in this study was based on previous studies by the host laboratory comparing cord blood immune responses of neonates with or without later allergy. Power calculations determined that our sample size was sufficient for the detection of a difference of 15% in cytokine levels between control and intervention groups at a
Characteristics of maternal and neonatal populations
As shown in the trial profile (Table I), 98 women entered the study. There was no significant difference in age, prepregnancy body mass index, allergic status (asthma or allergic rhinitis), or parity between the women in the fish oil and control groups. Eight women discontinued the study because of nausea that they associated with the capsules (7 of these were in the fish oil group). Four infants were subsequently excluded from the data analysis because they were born prematurely (1 in the
Discussion
It is now recognized that the increase in allergic disease might be the result of failure of normal immune regulation in early life, rather than simple “TH2 skewing” of immune responses.15 This might explain the observations by a number of groups that allergic children have stronger TH1 and TH2 responses to allergens.16, 17 There is now an urgent need to identify environmental factors that might influence immune regulatory pathways in early life and the propensity for allergic disease. To our
Acknowledgments
We wish to acknowledge the staff and patients who assisted in this study. We are particularly grateful to the obstetricians and midwives at St John of God Hospital, Subiaco, Western Australia. Finally, we wish to acknowledge Prof Scott Weiss of Harvard University for his support in the original planning of this study.
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Supported by grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council and Raine Medical Research Foundation, Australia.