Early Life Susceptibility to Food Allergy

Allergy often begins in the first year of life, first with eczema and then with the development of food allergy. Although rates of allergy have rapidly increased in the past two decades, we do not fully understand why. Our lab is interested in understanding factors that promote or protect from the development of food allergy in early life. One factor that we are currently studying is prenatal stress. We are also studying how the immune system develops in early life to understand how development deviates in the context of allergy. The SUNBEAM study (Systems Biology of Early Atopy) is enrolling 2500 families to study infants from birth to 3 years of age, and will provide opportunities to understand mechanisms responsible for allergy development.