Nutrition in Early Life

The Nutrition in Early Life team conducts research investigating nutritional strategies for allergic disease prevention including clinical trials, mechanistic studies and translatable research activities, all with the goal of reducing the rising burden of allergic diseases - now affecting more than one in every four individuals in our community.

This research focuses on identifying nutritional and environmental factors which influence the developing human immune system, particularly factors which predispose to allergic diseases (eczema, food allergy, hay fever and asthma in early childhood), as well as intervention studies for the prevention of allergic disease in childhood.

Team Highlights

1) We have secured NHMRC Project Grant funding to lead a new large-scale multi-centre (Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney) food allergy prevention study. This study will involve over 2100 women and their babies to determine whether the risk of developing a food allergy can be reduced by a maternal diet rich in eggs and peanuts during pregnancy and lactation. 

2) Dr Debbie Palmer has been asked to be an international invited speaker at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI) annual meeting in San Francisco in Feb 2019. This will be an excellent opportunity to highlight the research work of the Childhood Allergy and Immunology Research team to an international audience including many of the global top experts in this field.

3) K Rueter, AP Jones, A Siafarikas, EM Lim, N Bear, PS Noakes, SL Prescott and DJ Palmer. Direct infant UV light exposure is associated with eczema and immune development. J Allergy Clin Immunol (accepted Aug 2018). We have had accepted for publication in the journal ranked top in allergy, the results from a double-blinded randomised controlled trial which investigated infant vitamin D supplementation (compared to placebo) during the first 6 months of life and eczema development. In the trial we also used UV dosimeters to measure direct UV light exposure to infants. In summary, our findings indicate that sunlight exposure appears to be more beneficial than vitamin D supplementation as an allergy prevention strategy in early life. This paper has also been chosen to be featured on the website of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. This new evidence has led to the commencement of the design of a new study (the SunPreg Study) and enabled a new collaboration to be formed with Dr Shelley Gorman at the Telethon Kids Institute.