Maternal Fish Oil Intake May Help Reduce Allergies Among Infants

Taking fish oil supplements when pregnant could protect our offspring from developing allergies, suggests new research from an Australian team. Allergic diseases such as asthma have dramatically increased in Western countries over the last 20 to 30 years, often attributed to changes in lifestyle, such as diet. The researchers theorised that the Western world tends to eat much less oily fish. Furthermore, there is also increasing evidence that the failure of normal immune regulation that characterises allergy occurs in early life, they write in the December issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (vol 112, no 6).