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Environmental exposure trains the immune system to dampen allergic responses
- NEWS AND VIEWS
- 25 February 2026
Environmental exposure trains the immune system to dampen allergic responses
Clean living conditions that lessen exposure to microorganisms are linked to an increase in allergies. Mouse data reveal how the environment affects allergic immune responses.
Talal A. Chatila0
Talal A. Chatila
Talal A. Chatila is in the Division of Immunology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA, and in the Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston.
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The prevalence of allergic diseases in humans has increased markedly in modern times, coinciding with profound environmental and lifestyle changes that arose during the Industrial Revolution1. Perhaps the most influential proposal put forward to explain this surge in allergies is the hygiene hypothesis, which posits that the rise in allergic diseases reflects a drop in immune protection owing to people’s decreased exposure to microorganisms2. Writing in Nature, Erickson et al.3 provide evidence about how environmental exposure to allergy-triggering molecules helps to shape whether certain allergic reactions occur.
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Nature 650, 838-839 (2026)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00040-x
References
Platts-Mills, T. A. E. J. Allergy Clin. Immunol. 136, 3–13 (2015).
Perkin, M. R. & Strachan, D. P. Front. Allergy 3, 1051368 (2022).
Erickson, S., Lauring, B., Cullen, J. & Medzhitov, R. Nature 650, 987–996 (2026).
Martinez, F. D. & Holt, P. G. Lancet 354 (Suppl. 2), SII12–SII15 (1999).
Rosshart, S. P. et al. Science 365, aaw4361 (2019).
Beura, L. K. et al. Nature 532, 512–516 (2016).
Stephen-Victor, E., Crestani, E. & Chatila, T. A. Immunity 53, 277–289 (2020).
Stein, M. M. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 375, 411–421 (2016).
Trogen, B., Jacobs, S. & Nowak-Wegrzyn, A. Nutrients 14, 2565 (2022).
Competing Interests
T.A.C. is an inventor on published US patent application US10391131, which covers methods and compositions for the prevention and treatment of food allergy using microbial treatments. He is co-founder of Aleca Therapeutics and Belcanto, and has served as a consultant for Boxer Capital and Sanofi.
Read the paper: Environmentally driven immune imprinting protects against allergy
Allergy-triggering proteins share a common characteristic
The immunology that underlies picky eating
Subjects
Immunology
Medical research
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