Lockdown babies more likely to be healthy, research finds

Babies born during the first lockdown were less likely to need hospital care or antibiotics and experienced very few Covid-19 infections.

Babies born during the first lockdown were less likely to need hospital care or antibiotics and experienced very few Covid-19 infections.

That's according to new findings from a research project using blood and stool samples from 360 babies born during the lockdown.

The study, run by APC Microbiome Ireland, a world leading SFI Research Centre based in University College Cork, in collaboration with the Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) and the Royal College of Surgeons, investigated how the lockdown affected routine care for babies and their potential exposure to the virus.

Principal investigator Professor Jonathan Hourihane said they were looking ultimately to see if the lockdown conditions meant those babies were more likely to develop allergies and if the lockdowns would support the "so-called hygiene hypothesis". 

This theory suggests modern life is so clean it actually increases allergy rates, as extremely clean environments may not give children enough exposure to germs for their immune systems to set defences against infectious organisms.

“We wanted to investigate how this might be further exaggerated by lockdown and reduced human contact,” Prof Hourihane said.

"The project includes analysing what the trillions of fungi, bacteria and viruses, collectively called a microbiome, found in the babies’ stool can tell us.

We will continue to study the stool microbiome and allergy rate results but the indication of low Covid infection rates, low antibiotic use and low hospital attendance suggest we are on the right track with fewer infections circulating.”

Prof Hourihane, working at CHI at Temple Street and the Department of Paediatrics RCSI, said children would have allergy testing at one and two years of age.

“We can then examine the relationships between their microbiome and allergy outcomes,” he said.

Babies immunised against other diseases

The study also found, despite fears parents would stay at home and skip some medical care, these babies were immunised against other diseases at a higher than average rate.

Prof Hourihane said: “It is reassuring that this population of infants born during lockdown have received routine healthcare as normal."

Researchers, working with babies recruited through the Rotunda and the Coombe hospitals, found just four caught Covid-19 before turning six months old.

Two were identified in the community and two had unexpected positive results while attending for routine treatment in CHI at Connolly.

An RCSI spokesperson said this indicated “lockdown was an effective public health strategy in protecting one of society's most vulnerable groups”. 

Initial findings from the study were published in the medical journal Paediatric Allergy and Immunology earlier this summer.    

The study was co-funded by the Children’s Health Foundation and the Clemens von Pirquet Foundation, a European allergy charity.