Exploring Gender as a Mediator of Micro-Organism Exposure and Atopic Disease in New Zealand Preschool Children

Abstract

In recent decades, substantial attention has been given to the rapid rise in chronic inflammatory disorders such as atopic disease. The hygiene hypothesis and similar theories posit that this upsurge is linked to decreasing micro-organism exposure in early life, which results in immune dysregulation. While the literature on risk factors for atopic disease is extensive, the focus has primarily been on lifestyle and environment risks, and sociocultural influences have largely been ignored. Gender in particular has the potential to modify exposure, as the embodiment of gender norms can dictate how young children interact with the world around them. A biocultural, embodied approach is employed in this research to analyse whether gender should be viewed as a mediator of micro-organism exposure in children and a risk factor for atopic disease. Behavioural data and hand-print cultures were collected from three- to four-year-old children at a New Zealand early learning centre, concentrating on gender-specific behaviours related to micro-organism exposure and whether they result in quantifiable differences in exposure. There was evidence for boys interacting with high-exposure environments more frequently and girls displaying some aversion to uncleanliness and untidiness. These behaviours were supported by the hand-print cultures, which found that boys had significantly higher colony diversity than the girls. This study concludes that gender does mediate microbial exposure and likely contributes to the aetiology of atopic disease along with other biological and environmental factors.