The Hygiene Hypothesis and the Participation of Chemical Products

Hygiene hypothesis as a cause of adult diseases emerged in 1989 by David Strachmann. Since then controversial studies have been published and recently the importance of the microbiome in the rapidly increasing prevalence of some diseases is established. Microbiome is considered the symbiotic group of pathogens within mammals that consists from the bacteria of epidermis, gastrointestinal and respiratory tract. The concept of the ‘exposome’ is a broader term to include not only symbiotic pathogens, but a great variety of exogenous and endogenous chemicals in one’s lifetime. Exogenous exposures include environmental chemicals, whereas endogenous are formed from different metabolic processes. The long term toxic results of these chemicals are due to epigenetic modifications of the genome with greatly unknown consequences.