Prevention of allergy among children

Key message

Norwegian Knowledge Center for the Health Services was commis­sioned by the Norwegian Directorate of Health to perform a systematic litterature search for systematic reviews examining interventions to prevent various types of allergies in children.

Method

We performed a systematic search in various medical databases for systematic reviews about interventions to prevent of allergy in child­ren. The search was performed in july 2012 and was limited to the period 2009-2012. Both authors screened the identified references for relevance in accordance with the inclusion criteria.

Results

We identified 450 unique references in total. Of these 81 were con­sidered potentially relevant for prevention of allergy in children. We arranged the references into five groups according to which factors that might be the cause the allergy.

• 4 reviews was about guidelines, other possible confounders and the importance of geographical area
• 17 reviews was about factors related to genetic disposition and the illnesses and actions of the parents
• 13 reviews was about factors related to the child’s history of illnesses
• 24 reviews was about factors related to the nutrition of the child
• 22 reviews was about factors related to the environment of the child.