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A dietary supplement has been found to protect children against childhood eczema, say researchers.
Researchers at Otago and Auckland universities have found the probiotic supplement significantly reduced the rate of childhood eczema in children under two.
Probiotics were naturally occurring microbes often found in the intestines of infants.
Otago University's Professor Julian Crane said the two-year study investigated the use of two probiotic supplements in 446 mothers and babies.
"Our study has found when you give pregnant women the probiotic supplement, L rhamnosus, during the last five weeks of pregnancy, and for six months after birth while mothers are breast feeding, and then you give their infants the same probiotic up to two years of age, there is a 50 per cent reduction in eczema by the age of two."
The second probiotic tested, Bifidobacterium lactis, did not have the same results and acted more as a placebo, he said.
"This is important because it shows that the beneficial effects of probiotics vary considerably depending on which probiotics is used," said Prof Crane.
Eczema affects 30 per cent of infants in New Zealand by the age of two.
Severity varies from a small patch of scaly dry skin to large weeping areas covering much of a child's body.
There was no way to prevent it, and treatment relied on skin moisturising and corticosteroid creams.
Currently the prevalence of eczema was increasing in New Zealand and around the world, although the reasons were not clear.
In recent years the natural occurrence of probiotics had decreased, which could explain why there was an increase in the prevalence of eczema, Prof Crane said.
The researchers were following up the children to see if the benefits were sustained.
They also plan to see whether there has been any effect on asthma or hay fever as the children grow up.
- NZPA
