Prevention of allergy among children
Report
|Updated
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.