by Based on this study and previous comparative studies, Sinkkonen presents the following request: “The yard areas of all daycare centres should be transformed into green areas, because this will improve the regulation of children’s immune system in only a month. What is more, children’s motor skills and ability to concentrate will improve, and they will have a close relationship with nature.”
According to Juho Rajaniemi, the study shows that an enjoyable living environment that improves wellbeing can be built at low costs. “As many functional green environments as possible should absolutely be planned in towns and cities”, he encourages.
We analyzed changes in the skin and gut microbiota and blood immune markers of children during a 28-day biodiversity intervention. Children in standard urban and nature-oriented daycare centers were analyzed for comparison. The intervention diversified both the environmental and skin Gammaproteobacterial communities, which, in turn, were associated with increases in plasma TGF-β1 levels and the proportion of regulatory T cells. The plasma IL-10:IL-17A ratio increased among intervention children during the trial. Our findings suggest that biodiversity intervention enhances immunoregulatory pathways and provide an incentive for future prophylactic approaches to reduce the risk of immune-mediated diseases in urban societies.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aba2578
https://www.sciencealert.com/daycares-in-finland-grew-forests-and-it-changed-kids-immune-systems
An important aspect of these findings is that the commensal microbiota of children in intervention daycare centers became more similar to that observed in children attending nature-oriented daycares (Fig. 1), where children make daily visits to nearby forests.
