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Correction for Ponsonby et al., Int. J. Epidemiol. 37 (3) 559-569.


IJE Advance Access published online on May 2, 2008
International Journal of Epidemiology, doi:10.1093/ije/dyn077
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2008; all rights reserved.

Commentary: The end of the hygiene hypothesis?

Jeroen Douwes* and Neil Pearce

Centre for Public Health Research, Massey University Wellington Campus, Private Box 756, Wellington, New Zealand.

* Corresponding author. E-mail: j.douwes@massey.ac.nz

Accepted 1 April 2008

The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below.

Three years ago, we published a commentary in the International Journal of Epidemiology, which concluded that the observed increases in asthma prevalence in Western countries had peaked or even begun to decline.1 Further evidence for this is presented in the paper by Ponsonby et al.2 that appears in the current issue of the journal. However, although there is now substantial evidence that the ‘epidemic’ of asthma in Western countries has begun to decline, the reasons for the decline remain as mysterious as the reasons for the epidemic itself. In recent years, it has become routine to attribute the epidemic to the ‘hygiene hypothesis’, particularly with regards to the protective effects of microbial exposure early in life, but there are many anomalies in the epidemiological evidence that raise questions about this interpretation of . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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