{"title":"Early-life infectious disease exposure, the 'hygiene hypothesis', and lifespan: evidence from hookworm.","authors":"Ralph Lawton","doi":"10.1101/2024.12.09.24318730","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Exposure to infectious disease in early life may have long-term ramifications for health and mortality. This study leverages quasi-experimental variation from the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission's de-worming campaign in the early 20th century, combined with pre-campaign hookworm prevalence, to rigorously examine the impacts of childhood hookworm exposure on later-life morbidity and lifespan. Pre-intervention surveys find widespread hookworm exposure among children in the American South, but minimal prevalence among adults. I show exposure to de-worming before age five leads to 2.5 additional months of life in a sample of older-age mortality. Further, decreasing hookworm exposure is related to later-life declines in biomarkers for inflammation and skin-tested allergies, in contrast with the predictions of the ``hygiene hypothesis''. Placebo tests using health outcomes that should not be affected by de-worming do not show similar patterns.</p>","PeriodicalId":94281,"journal":{"name":"medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11661344/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.12.09.24318730","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Exposure to infectious disease in early life may have long-term ramifications for health and mortality. This study leverages quasi-experimental variation from the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission's de-worming campaign in the early 20th century, combined with pre-campaign hookworm prevalence, to rigorously examine the impacts of childhood hookworm exposure on later-life morbidity and lifespan. Pre-intervention surveys find widespread hookworm exposure among children in the American South, but minimal prevalence among adults. I show exposure to de-worming before age five leads to 2.5 additional months of life in a sample of older-age mortality. Further, decreasing hookworm exposure is related to later-life declines in biomarkers for inflammation and skin-tested allergies, in contrast with the predictions of the ``hygiene hypothesis''. Placebo tests using health outcomes that should not be affected by de-worming do not show similar patterns.