A new study reassures parents that although young kids might get sick more often when they first start group childcare, these same kids get fewer infections later in their childhood. About one in three U.S. kids receives organized childcare before reaching kindergarten age, whether at a daycare center or a school.
According to lead author Sylvana Cote of the University of Montreal, in Quebec, “Daycare centers have a reputation for being germ factories.” She added that children attending one may get sick more often than children who stay at home. This is the first study that looked into daycare’s potential long-term effects on children’s health. The team identified more than 1,200 families with a newborn in Quebec and followed them for the first 8 years of the child’s life. They noted that on an average, children had about three respiratory infections, as well as one ear and one gastrointestinal infection every year with wide variations.
Of these the kids under the age of two-and-a-half who spent at least 10 hours a week surrounded by at least seven other children in a daycare facility initially experienced around 60 percent more respiratory tract and ear infections than home raised kids. However these day care experienced kids had 21 percent fewer respiratory tract infections and 43 percent fewer ear infections during the early elementary school years. There was no difference in the numbers of gastrointestinal infections. The benefits did not stay in kids who attended daycare with smaller groups of children, or who entered a large group daycare after the age of two-and-a-half. Cote said, “When children start interacting with a large number of other kids, that’s when their rate of infection goes up… It’s really a question of timing…The children may have the same overall number of infections, but we argue that it’s better to experience these awful infections earlier. Missing daycare doesn’t carry the same implications as missing school in kindergarten or first grade, when children learn to read and write.”
The findings appear in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Authors add that further research is necessary to confirm the findings. Cote said that being sick might help build a child’s immunity, and that a child’s immune system may be particularly sensitive to such shaping during the early preschool years. She added, “Parents can be reassured that daycare is not leading to more infections overall. It may even be better to have those infections earlier.”
Dr. Henry Bernstein, chief of general pediatrics at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on Infectious Diseases, who was not involved with the study said this study findings were logical. He said, “There’s no question when there’s an environment where kids are in close contact — and young kids may not be washing their hands as much as adults — the spread of germs happens more readily.” The number of gastrointestinal illnesses being same in both group of kids can be explained he said. He said gastrointestinal illnesses may not be spread as readily as respiratory or ear infections at day care facilities because parents may be more likely to quickly intervene when symptoms such as vomiting or loose stools appear. But runny noses or coughs may not attract parents’ attention as readily, he said, keeping sick children in day care and increasing their chances of exposing others.
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