Any parent who has educated their child in a nursery school knows that after a week of classes there are usually several days at home with fever, cold, cough and everything around. This gives rise to the feeling that daycare centers are veritable viral bombs, an ecosystem where pathogens jump from child to child and end up in the home.
which is thought Faced with this endless cycle of pediatricians, antibiotics and sick leave, popular wisdom often offers some solace: “It’s good that he’s going through it now, so he gets the vaccine when he’s older.”. But what does the scientific literature actually say about this vaccination?
Effect of entry. When a child enters daycare, the impact on their short-term health is so sudden that researchers have measured it perfectly. For example, a follow-up study in Finland found that children with respiratory symptoms decreased from an average of 3.8 days before daily care to 10.6 days per month just eight weeks after admission. The problem is that parents’ sick leave from work to care for minors follows the same lines.
In Spain, the Primary Care Pediatrics Association offers us data, which confirmed that the risk increases in the first year of life. Specifically, early exposure in preschool (the first year of life) increases the risk of developing neuromia and doubles the average number of emergency room visits.
It’s not forever. This “entry effect,” which corresponds to children’s exposure to an environment that is not so sterile, has an expiration date. Here a German team verified that, although there is a clear peak of colds, bronchitis or diarrhea in the first two or three years, from the age of four the difference disappears and is even reversed for children who go to school earlier than usual.
Reservoir at home. To understand why a child’s classroom is so efficient at spreading viruses, we must look at its role as a biological reservoir. What was found was that analysis of nasal mucus from different families over a year showed that children under five were four times more likely to detect the virus than the rest of the population.
But the most frustrating thing is that many of these detections were accompanied by no symptoms, so there is an explanation for the classic situation of a child who seems healthy infecting his parents and siblings. Because here the baby is a real viral bomb which means that living with small children adds about three extra weeks of viral presence.
It is no danger. If we say that children get sick when they go to daycare, it might be logical to think that their quality of life in childhood will be worse if this decision is made. But the reality is not like that, as it was found that the total infection rate at age six was virtually the same between those who went to daycare and those who stayed at home.
The real difference is that these illnesses will occur sooner than expected when you are in daycare. This is why the worst immunological time to start daycare is between 6 and 12 months.
Immunity. Some people think that suffering a primary infection builds an iron immune system for the future, but the reality is very different. The scientific evidence here tells us that the latter protection is real, but not forever, as these same children had 21% fewer respiratory symptoms and 43% fewer otitis media by the time they reached elementary school. However, long-term studies reveal that by the time children reach age 13, any protective benefit has completely disappeared.
In more serious diseases As with asthma or leukemia, science calls for caution. Right now there are some studies that have found a direct link between going to daycare and being less likely to develop acute lymphoblastic leukemia or pneumonia, but more research needs to be done to get more conclusive information.
Picture | Pavel Danilyuk
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