Little Rhea’s porcelain features contort with pain every time she suffers a fit of cough. In a matter of minutes, her pink face changes various shades to a painful blue, as she doubles over labouring to catch her breath. Rhea is a classic victim of asthma. But a study published recently in the journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy throws up some interesting facts that could come as a ray of hope for children like her.

According to the study, drinking farm milk reduces childhood asthma and allergies like hayfever (commonly known as rhinitis). Researchers in Europe and the US studied nearly 15,000 children aged between five and 13 in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland and came up with this startling conclusion. “Children who drank farm milk were much less likely to suffer from asthma and hayfever,” claims lead author Marco Waser, a doctor in natural sciences at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

The subjects for the study were drawn from farm families, rural and suburban communities and Rudolph Steiner schools, which primarily cater to families with anthroposcopic lifestyles (who restrict their use of antibiotics, vaccinations and fever-reducing drugs, and often follow a biodynamic diet). It was a pretty comprehensive project in which parents were asked to fill in detailed questionnaires about their child’s consumption of milk, butter, yoghurt, eggs, fruit and vegetables, and whether these were farm-produced or bought from shops. They also answered questions about their child’s height and weight, whether they were breastfed, and if there were any allergies or asthma problems affecting the child or anyone else in the family.

The study revealed lower levels of diagnosed asthma in children eating farm-produced dairy products. Moreover, it was found that consuming farm eggs provided protection against hayfever. “All children drinking unpasteurised farm milk and eating other farm-related dairy products showed the same level of protection against asthma and allergies, regardless of whether they were living on a farm or not,” adds Dr Waser. This is an important finding since it rules out the other protective factors that farm life may provide, such as exposure to microbial compounds in animal sheds and farm homes. For example, earlier studies have shown that farm children are less likely to be affected by pollen.

There are several reasons why this study has generated a buzz in the medical community. “It is a cross-sectional multicentric study and includes a good number of reference children both from rural and semi-urban backgrounds. This increases the validity of the study and adds credence to the results,” says Dr Gautam Ghosh, national chairperson-elect, Indian Academy of Pediatrics Respiratory Chapter.

However, despite the important discovery, the study suffers from certain limitations. No measurements of the biological compounds of farm milk or other farm-produced dairy products are available, and experts point out that the study only reports associations, not providing an insight into the exact mechanism underlying the observed association between farm milk consumption and allergic diseases.

Also, it is unlikely that these findings — which contradict the common knowledge that cow milk precipitates allergy — will go uncontested. “This was a prospective analysis with a cohort population of school children; the effect of farm products on all children was not considered,” adds Dr Ghosh, who is also consultant paediatric pulmonologist at B.R. Singh Hospital (Eastern Railway), Calcutta. “Hence, a general message of the effect of farm products on all children throughout the world cannot be extrapolated from this study.”

There is another, perhaps more serious, problem that must be addressed. Studies like this one may encourage people to turn to raw farm products (even unpasteurised milk), and this may increase the occurrence of poultry-borne diseases like salmonelleasis, shigelliosis and SARS. Raw milk contains pathogens such as salmonella and enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC). The transmission of EHEC through unpasteurised cow milk continues to pose serious health risks.

And Waser seems to agree. “A deeper understanding needs to be developed of why farm milk offers children a higher level of protection and investigate ways of making the product safer while retaining the protective qualities,” he says. Till then, consumption of farm milk can, perhaps, not be recommended.

However, all not is lost yet. Critics have agreed that for considerable statistical significance (which is essential for establishing the validity of any study), a large sample size is a necessity. And this is where the study scores.

So people like Rhea can probably now breathe easy!