The Daily Mail – Kate Pickles
“Having a pet dog reduces a child’s risk of asthma by 15 per cent – and contact with farm animals can halve it, a study has found. The findings add weight to the ‘hygiene hypothesis’ that suggests living in too-clean conditions early in life can increase susceptibility to allergy conditions such as asthma. Scientists looked at more than one million children born between 2001 and 2010 in Sweden, where dog and farm animal ownership has to be registered by law.”(more)