Can farmyard dust prevent childhood asthma?

The Asthma UK blog reports on the work of Professor Sejal Saglani. She says:

There’s some really nice research that has shown that children who are brought up on farms or in a farming environment are very protected from wheezing and asthma. This is especially true for the traditional farming environment where families are doing the work themselves without machinery and so on.

(It clearly has to start early. One of my worst asthma episodes marred a family holiday spent on a poultry farm in Brittany.)

Professor Saglani's research involves a laboratory setting mimicking as far as possible the farmyard environment. It is an exacting task, considering the number of parameters which must be involved, but clearly with great prospects. There is more here.