Raising a child changes parents’ immune systems

For our immune system, there are worse than cold, flu or fatigue. There are the children. A study published in the journal Nature Immunology looks at the environmental factors that influence our immune response. It reveals that living as a couple with a child under the same roof is a huge challenge for our natural defenses.

Immune convergence

The researchers analyzed blood samples from 670 people they followed for three years to try to identify factors that modulate the immune response of individuals. Among these factors, they isolated age, sex, or body mass.

But above all, they noted that one of the most determining factors was the fact, for a couple, of living together in the same place and of raising a child together. Thus, the immune systems of these people tended to change to become similar, with 50% less variation than in a male-female couple taken at random from the general population.

“Raising a child is one of the most radical environmental challenges you can face in your life,” the researchers say. It makes sense to see that this situation generates a complete reconnection of the immune system ”. However, the authors did not expect the presence of a child to have such an impact on the parents’ defenses. In fact, an acute gastroenteritis or a flu vaccine does not do the same!

When kids attack our system

According to the authors, this could be explained by the fact that children constantly challenge our immune systems, they who have the art of catching viruses that lie around, shortening our nights and making us stress – sometimes, by any case. In the end, these parental joys would therefore have another, more unexpected function.

That said, this immune convergence, romantic as it is, does not seem to have any particular use. The interest of this study lies above all in the demonstration of an “immune elasticity”, as determining as the genetic factors which condition the response of our organism to attacks of all kinds.