"Mother's Placental Characteristics Linked to Persistent Pediatric Food Allergies"

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A domestic research team has revealed that pediatric food allergies that persist until around elementary school entry are related to the gene-regulatory characteristics of the placenta.

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency's National Institute of Health, a long-term follow-up observation of 1,518 children participating in a large-scale birth cohort study (COCOA) up to the age of 7 revealed that pediatric food allergies that do not easily resolve until a relatively late age are associated with gene-regulatory changes in the placenta.

Pediatric food allergy is a common allergic disease in infancy and early childhood that can cause anaphylaxis, with prevalence rates standing at 4.8% in Europe, 3.2% in the US, and 4.2% in Asia, showing a growing trend worldwide.

While pediatric food allergies often resolve naturally as children grow, some children continue to suffer from them into school age. Particularly during infancy, because it increases the risk of subsequent allergic rhinitis, asthma, and decreased lung function, predicting the clinical course and early intervention are important.

However, the biological differences between children whose food allergies spontaneously improve and those who suffer from them long-term have not been fully elucidated until now.

The researchers classified and analyzed the study subjects into the "no allergy group" (1,364 children), the "early-resolving group" (76 children) whose allergies developed in infancy and improved early, the "early-persistent group" (63 children) who suffered from allergies from infancy up to age 7, and the "late-resolving group" (15 children) whose allergies improved relatively late after onset. The analysis showed that in the early-persistent group, changes regulating the activity of certain genes, such as RPS6KA2 and GCSAML, in the placenta at birth appeared more frequently than in the "no allergy group" or the "early-resolving group."

Differences across the child groups were also evident in immune markers.

Children in the early-persistent group showed higher levels of immune response substances related to allergic inflammation at ages 3 and 7 compared to children in the no allergy group.

This suggests that vulnerability in the immune system may make allergies more likely to appear.

This study demonstrates that when pediatric food allergies persist up to age 7, they can be related to the gene-regulatory characteristics of the placenta at birth and immune responses during the growth process. The research team explained that this does not mean placental changes are the direct cause of pediatric food allergies.

(Photo provided by Yonhap News TV, provided by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, Yonhap News)

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