Association of early daycare attendance with allergic disorders in children: a longitudinal national survey in Japan

Abstract

The association between early daycare attendance and risk of allergic diseases remains inconclusive. Therefore, we examined the association among Japanese children on a long-term basis using a nationwide longitudinal survey data. We estimated the association between daycare attendance at age 6 or 18 months and allergy development using information on outpatient visits for atopic dermatitis (AD), food allergy (FA), and asthma and admission for asthma up to 12 years of age as a proxy for developing these diseases, with multilevel logistic regression. Early daycare attendance was associated with increased odds of AD at ages 2.5–3.5 years: the adjusted odds ratio (OR) was 1.34 [95% CI: 1.21, 1.47]. The association with FA was equivocal. The odds of asthma was increased before age 3.5 years and afterwards decreased: the adjusted ORs were 1.60 [1.44, 1.77] for ages 1.5–2.5 years and 0.77 [0.69, 0.87] for ages 5.5–7 years. The effect of early daycare attendance depends on the type of allergies.

Keywords:

• Allergies
• asthma
• children
• epidemiology
• exposure assessment
• hygiene hypothesis

Acknowledgments

The sponsor had no involvement in the study design; the collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data; the writing of the report; or the decision to submit the paper for publication. We thank Saori Irie for the variable support in collecting the data. We thank Edanz Group (www.edanzediting.com/ac) for editing a draft of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This study was partly supported by a grant from Okayama University, which was distributed by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan [grant number 5001700014].