Amish children's allergy rates among lowest

[Ultonius]

Reuters

Amish farm kids remarkably immune to allergies: study

By Kerry Grens

NEW YORK | Fri May 4, 2012 4:08pm EDT

(Reuters Health) - Amish children raised on rural farms in northern Indiana suffer from asthma and allergies less often even than Swiss farm kids, a group known to be relatively free from allergies, according to a new study.

"The rates are very, very low," said Dr. Mark Holbreich, the study's lead author. "So there's something that we feel is even more protective in the Amish" than in European farming communities.

What it is about growing up on farms -- and Amish farms in particular -- that seems to prevent allergies remains unclear.

Researchers have long observed the so-called "farm effect" -- the low allergy and asthma rates found among kids raised on farms -- in central Europe, but less is known about the influence of growing up on North American farms.

Holbreich, an allergist in Indianapolis, has been treating Amish communities in Indiana for two decades, but he noticed that very few Amish actually had any allergies.

As studies on the farm effect in Europe began to emerge several years ago, Holbreich wondered if the same phenomenon might be found in the United States.

He teamed up with European colleagues to compare Swiss farming children and non-farming children to Amish kids in Indiana.

Amish families, who can trace their roots back to Switzerland, typically farm using methods from the 1800s and they don't own cars or televisions.

The researchers surveyed 157 Amish families, about 3,000 Swiss farming families, and close to 11,000 Swiss families who did not live on a farm -- all with children between the ages of six and 12.

They found that just five percent of Amish kids had been diagnosed with asthma, compared to 6.8 percent of Swiss farm kids and 11.2 percent of the other Swiss children.

Similarly, among 138 Amish kids given a skin-prick test to determine whether they were predisposed to having allergies, only 10 kids -- or seven percent -- had a positive response.

In comparison, 25 percent of the farm-raised Swiss kids and 44 percent of the other Swiss children had a positive test, the researchers report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

The study did not determine why the kids who grew up on farms were less likely to develop asthma and allergies, but other research has pointed to exposure to microbes and contact with cows, in particular, to partially explain the farm effect (see Reuters Health story of May 2, 2012).

Drinking raw cow's milk also seems to be involved, Holbreich said.

The going theory is this early exposure to the diverse potential allergens and pathogens on a farm trains the immune system to recognize them, but not overreact to the harmless ones.

As for why the Amish kids have even lower allergy and asthma rates than the other farming kids, "that piece of the puzzle we really haven't explained," Holbreich told Reuters Health.

He speculated that it could be at least partly a result of the Amish having larger families or spending even more time outside or in barns than people on more modern working farms.

Dr. Corinna Bowser, an allergist in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, said there's also a possibility that inherited factors could play a role.

"The Amish are still of a limited genetic pool, I would assume, because they're much more segregated than the Swiss kids are," she told Reuters Health.

Holbreich said upcoming studies will further investigate the differences between the farming groups, with an eye toward designing possible interventions.

For instance, pregnant mothers or young children could be exposed to the mysterious factors that seem to protect farm kids as a preventive treatment, he explained.

"The goal is to try to find a way to prevent this allergy and asthma epidemic that western populations are facing," Holbreich said.

SOURCE: bit.ly/Kx5841 Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, online April 16, 2012.

One interesting thing that strikes me about this is that in the two largest Amish settlements in northern Indiana, Elkhart-Lagrange and Nappanee, full-time farming is actually a minority occupation. A large proportion of men in Elkhart-Lagrange did factory work, often in RV factories, though I believe that redundancies caused by the recession have led to some developing home businesses or going back to farming. However, farming is still a common occupation in the two more conservative 'Swiss Amish' settlements of Adams County and Allen County. I wonder if the researchers concentrated on full-time farming families, or spread their attention over the whole Amish population. Even non-farming Amish still live on 'farmettes', with a horse-barn and pasture large enough for a couple of carriage horses, so if contact with animals is a factor in the low allergy rates, the children from non-farming families should still get some benefit. If raw milk is the primary factor instead, children living on dairy farms would probably show the lowest rates.

[LaCroix]

I'd assume it's a result of playing outside in fields, instead of being exposed to a almost plant-free environment for city-dwellers.

I mean, Vienna is hardly a plant-free zone, with lot's of green spots in between, but I can't even remember seeing bees or grasshoppers and stuff. There were a few (mostly chestnut and fir) trees and a bit of always-trimmed (thus never pollinating) grass in parks or gardens. Even in sub-urbian towns, the grass is always neat. Out at the countryside, huge fields are left standing until the grass has shed their seeds, and then made to hay, and whole woods of various trees are swaying in the wind - you get the whole cloud of all kinds of pollen.

And for asthma - I blame the permanent exhaust fume in the air - people living there don't even notice it. Getting out of your flat and taking your child for a walk to the park means that you actually expose it to worse air than in the flat.

No wonder people growing up in cities are more prone to asthma and allergies.

[Dave]

Color me unsurprised. Allergies are basically the body having an immune system response to a common substance that is not actually a hazard.

Opinion:
If your body grew up in contact with anything and everything, it will be used to those things and generally not bother having an allergic reaction to those things. That's how my parents (both medical doctors) raised me: I went out and made mudpies and got messy when I was a kid, and my parents only made me take a bath once a week (unless I was really dirty). So I was living with dog hair and pollen and a whole lot of other stuff on my skin as I was growing up.

The only thing I'm (mildly) allergic to is latex, and since my dad has that too, I'm wondering if that was genetic.

Can't comment on the asthma though, I was born with it and actually have never heard of anyone acquiring it later in life.

[Simon_Jester]

Interestingly, growing up with a specific allergen doesn't always work- you can grow up with long-haired cats who seem bound and determined to turn the carpets into camouflage environments by shedding so much hair they change the color, and still be allergic to cat hair.

[cosmicalstorm]

There is probably some spaghetti-ish explanation found in the interplay between environment, genes, epi-genetics and diet. The hygiene theory does suffer some serious problems.

[Broomstick]

And for asthma - I blame the permanent exhaust fume in the air - people living there don't even notice it. Getting out of your flat and taking your child for a walk to the park means that you actually expose it to worse air than in the flat.

The northern Indiana Amish are exposed to loads of fumes, smoke, and particulates due to their proximity to the steel mills, chemical plants, and petroleum refineries just next door - trust me, I live in that general area. When the wind blows right you can smell the hot steel and sulfur of the mills just as easily in Nappanee-Elkhart-etc. as in the city of Gary.

However, even the factory-worker Amish (as pointed out, more and more Amish in northern Indiana are working anywhere but on a farm) still often live on the family farm, or were raised on a family farm, and even if they aren't, they still are much more exposed to things like horse manure due to their use of animal power for transportation. The lifestyle differences between the Amish and their more allergic neighbors are pretty significant and there could well be more than just dirt and dung involved in this.

[LaCroix]

And for asthma - I blame the permanent exhaust fume in the air - people living there don't even notice it. Getting out of your flat and taking your child for a walk to the park means that you actually expose it to worse air than in the flat.

The northern Indiana Amish are exposed to loads of fumes, smoke, and particulates due to their proximity to the steel mills, chemical plants, and petroleum refineries just next door - trust me, I live in that general area. When the wind blows right you can smell the hot steel and sulfur of the mills just as easily in Nappanee-Elkhart-etc. as in the city of Gary.

However, even the factory-worker Amish (as pointed out, more and more Amish in northern Indiana are working anywhere but on a farm) still often live on the family farm, or were raised on a family farm, and even if they aren't, they still are much more exposed to things like horse manure due to their use of animal power for transportation. The lifestyle differences between the Amish and their more allergic neighbors are pretty significant and there could well be more than just dirt and dung involved in this.

I'm not quite sure, are you agreeing or disagreeing with my statement that early, constant exposure to exhaust fumes might be a major factor for the rise of asthma?

Study

[Ultonius]

In at least some communities, Amish children seem to often go barefoot during warm weather, so I suppose that could be another factor.

The fact that Swiss farm children are described as having quite low allergy rates as well could indicate a shared genetic factor, since most Amish probably have some Swiss ancestry to a greater or lesser degree. The majority of Amish came to North America in the 18th century as part of the ethnic German migration to Pennsylvania from Switzerland, Alsace and areas of southern Germany such as the Palatinate (the latter including refugees of Swiss origin). A smaller proportion of Amish, known as the 'Swiss Amish' came directly from Switzerland to areas such as Indiana during the 19th century.

One way of ascertaining how important Swiss ancestry is in having allergy resistance would be to look at those groups of the 'Russian Mennonite' tradition (since they are mainly of Dutch and north German origin) that still regularly use horse-drawn vehicles, and compare their children's resistance to that of Amish children.

[Broomstick]

And for asthma - I blame the permanent exhaust fume in the air - people living there don't even notice it. Getting out of your flat and taking your child for a walk to the park means that you actually expose it to worse air than in the flat.

The northern Indiana Amish are exposed to loads of fumes, smoke, and particulates due to their proximity to the steel mills, chemical plants, and petroleum refineries just next door - trust me, I live in that general area. When the wind blows right you can smell the hot steel and sulfur of the mills just as easily in Nappanee-Elkhart-etc. as in the city of Gary.

However, even the factory-worker Amish (as pointed out, more and more Amish in northern Indiana are working anywhere but on a farm) still often live on the family farm, or were raised on a family farm, and even if they aren't, they still are much more exposed to things like horse manure due to their use of animal power for transportation. The lifestyle differences between the Amish and their more allergic neighbors are pretty significant and there could well be more than just dirt and dung involved in this.

I'm not quite sure, are you agreeing or disagreeing with my statement that early, constant exposure to exhaust fumes might be a major factor for the rise of asthma?

Study

I'm disagreeing that exposure to exhaust fumes of various sorts accounts for the differential in asthma between the Amish and non-Amish in Indiana, because the Amish are not simply blocked up behind a wall. Everybody is breathing the same air. The Amish communities are downwind of the heavy industry in Northern Indiana so their air is far from pristine. Amish isolation is more social than physical at this point. The Amish may still be using horse-and-buggy but their buggies are using the same roads as everyone else that is a driving a fume-spewing vehicle. The Tri-State Tollway and Interstate 94 both go straight through Amish areas, you can see the farmhouses from the roadway if you know what to look for (white homes with black shutters, barns usually red or brown, no powerlines going to the buildings, and of course horse/buggies and people in distinctive dress). It's not particularly unusual to see Amish at the local Wal-Mart or other places of business, they're a fixture at farmers' markets around here, and they ride the trains and buses that go through the area just like everyone else. Amish will even make trips into places like Chicago, both for business (farmer's markets, medical treatment), while traveling to other Amish communities (Union Station is a major connection for train lines going to other places in the US and Canada), and because Amish occasionally take vacations just like other people.

While there may be considerable environmental differences between the Amish lifestyle and the non-Amish lifestyle, air quality is not one of them. They're breathing the same muck as everyone else in Northern Indiana.

[Ultonius]

Most Amish, except for those who use solar or wind power, and possibly some very conservative groups relying completely on human/animal muscle power, employ diesel/petrol engines for a variety of purposes, such as powering home appliances, and agricultural and workshop machinery (directly through shafts and belts or indirectly through pneumatic, hydraulic or electrical means). I'm not sure whether this use of internal combustion engines for purposes where most people would use mains electricity balances out the lower exposure to motor vehicle fumes or not. And of course, as Broomstick points out, fumes from heavy industry and motor vehicles affect everyone, so air quality probably isn't much of a factor in the lower Amish asthma rates.

I also came across this article about a study of Amish in Ohio that suggests they have lower cancer rates.

The study of Amish suggests that clean living can lead to healthier life. Overall cancer rates in this population were 60 percent of the age-adjusted rate for Ohio and 56 percent of the national rate. The incidence of tobacco-related cancers in the Amish adults was 37 percent of the rate for Ohio adults, and the incidence of non-tobacco-related cancer was 72 percent.

“The Amish are at an increased risk for a number of genetic disorders but they probably have protection against many types of cancer both through their lifestyle – there is very little tobacco or alcohol use and limited sexual partners – and through genes that may reduce their susceptibility to cancer,” said Westman, who co-authored the study with OSUCCC-James researcher Amy K. Ferketich, who specializes in epidemiology.

The findings were reported in a recent issue of the journal Cancer Causes & Control. The study, which spanned 1996-2003 and is the first of its kind, looked at the incidence of 24 types of cancer in the Amish population. Of the 24 types of cancer studied, the incidence of seven of them – cervical, laryngeal, lung, oral cavity/pharyngeal, melanoma, breast and prostate – was low enough compared with the Ohio rate to be statistically significant.

...

The low cancer incidence in the Ohio Amish may be partially explained by lifestyle factors such as limited tobacco consumption and lack of sexual promiscuity. The Amish, as a whole, consume very little tobacco and alcohol, and they lead active, labor-intensive lives as farmers, construction laborers and factory workers.

“One of the things we can learn from the Amish is that they don’t typically smoke or use tobacco products,” Westman said. “They have limited sexual partners and monogamous relationships, so they don’t have some of the cancers that are related to sexual promiscuity.”

Even skin cancer rates are lower for Amish, despite the fact though many Amish make their living working outdoors where they are exposed to sunlight and UV rays.

“They are typically covered and dress to work in the sun the way that is recommended by wearing wide-brimmed hats and generally wearing long sleeves to protect their arms,” Westman said.

It would be interesting if a similar study were to be performed in another Amish settlement, such as Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Tobacco and alcohol use are more common among more conservative Amish groups, but the New Order Amish, who are a significant minority in Holmes County, are strongly opposed to their use, and some of the majority Old Order in the settlement have also adopted this belief. In Lancaster County, on the other hand, the New Order have only a few church districts, and tobacco is a fairly common crop for Amish farmers there. It might turn out that Lancaster County Amish have somewhat higher rates of cancers caused by alcohol and tobacco use.

[Broomstick]

Just the lower rates of obesity/higher rates of exercise (in the form of physical labor) could account for some of the cancer differences, as obesity and lack of exercise can both increase the risk of some cancers.

I wonder if they have a lower average consumption of meat/animal products than the typical American? They're by no means vegetarian, and certain some of their dishes are heavy on fat, but they frequently grow good sized vegetable gardens and fresh vegetables are certainly in their diets. Of course, different Amish families in the same community, as well as different communities of Amish, have differing diets.

[Winston Blake]

The sad thing about Ultonius' link is that it makes you realise how much healthier the general population could be with just a few changes. Little or no tobacco or alcohol, safe sex, wide-brim hats and long cotton clothes, more physical activity, better diet, etc. It would be nice to see Amish-style outdoor clothes become normal in Australia and perhaps equatorial regions, but it's not going to happen.

[HeadCreeps]

Holmes County resident.

As far as I've seen, no, they don't eat less meat, but they do eat more vegetables (as in they eat more than potatoes, oh my) and less junk food. Pollution levels in Holmes County are significantly lower than in the other three counties named in this thread as there is no significant industrial base or population center nearby. The factories here do hire a lot of Amish people, but there is a strong construction, crafts, tourism and farming economy here as well for them. There is even a town specifically built around Amish tourism in their half of the county.

I wasn't aware of the idea that the Amish here smoke less, but the non-Amish in the area have a very high rate of smoking to contrast them. The Amish communities here are mostly separate from the non-Amish communities.

Keep in mind they have significantly less genetic diversity in the Holmes County study, so it doesn't necessarily mean the cause is healthy living. It's probably a combination of both factors.

[Surlethe]

How about a selection effect? Amish people with really bad allergies have a horrible time of it, so they get the hell out.

[Ultonius]

How about a selection effect? Amish people with really bad allergies have a horrible time of it, so they get the hell out.

Why would being Amish make severe allergies unbearable? I don't think any Amish groups except perhaps the most conservative ones would have a problem with people buying anti-allergy medication. An allergy to horse dander is the only one I can think of that would definitely be worse for someone living an Amish lifestyle than for someone living a mainstream one, and from what I've read, only 4% of people with allergies have it.

[Broomstick]

How about a selection effect? Amish people with really bad allergies have a horrible time of it, so they get the hell out.

Why would being Amish make severe allergies unbearable? I don't think any Amish groups except perhaps the most conservative ones would have a problem with people buying anti-allergy medication.

As far as I know absolutely no Amish group opposes modern medicine. Sure, they also believe in the power of prayer, but they'll happy avail themselves of medical science as well. It's a little weird when they show up and pay cash for a kidney transplant or open heart surgery (they don't believe in insurance, so they pay all medical expenses out of pocket) but they do things like that.

Any Amish kid with allergies will get treatment for them. Arguably, they'll be more assured of getting appropriate treatment than a lot of inner city kids living a modern lifestyle.

[Ultonius]

I think some Amish will try natural herbal remedies for minor ailments before they go to the doctor or pharmacist. There was also this case last year in the fairly conservative Smicksburg, Pennsylvania settlement where a woman suffering from severe burns was treated at home, at her own request, for 2 days with home remedies, and developed septicaemia and died.

With medical expenses, from what I understand, families will pay in cash from their own pocket if they can, and if they cannot, the remaining costs will be covered by community-based insurance programmes such as Church Aid, or their church district's alms fund, augmented by a benefit auction if necessary.

[Broomstick]

Yes, but don't call it "insurance" within ear-shot of the Amish.

Sure, some don't go to the doctor when they should, but you can say that about supposedly educated and intelligent mainstream people. Individuals might make bad choices, but nothing in the religion forbids going to a modern doctor or using modern medicine, even the high-tech stuff.

[Ultonius]

Yes, it's really only insurance in the sense that it fulfils the same role. In practice it's closer to traditional Amish mutual aid customs such as barn raisings.

I think you're generally right when it comes to the Amish and medicine. My original reply to Surlethe was really just to avoid making a blanket statement about all Amish everywhere, since their decentralized form of church government means that there can be a wide variety in cultural practices.

[Ultonius]

Sorry to double post, but thought this was relevant. The anti-vaccination investigative Dan Olmsted, who has previously claimed that the Amish have no autism and that this is because they do not vaccinate, has used the study I referred to in the OP to repeat this claim.

Dan Olmsted: The Amish All Over Again

By Dan Olmsted

Back in the early days of USA Today 30 years ago, the paper’s founder, Al Neuharth, roamed the newsroom, micromanaging and demanding impossibly high standards. That was not necessarily a bad thing – the paper was his baby and he knew what he wanted – but it produced some classic moments. In one case, he rejected headline after headline on a particular story – as it was told to me, 24 times -- until the frustrated editor once again handed him the first headline that he had by now forgotten.

“Finally!” Neuharth exclaimed.

I’m about at that point when it comes to the Amish and their amazingly good health. There’s been story after story reporting the relative absence of Alzheimer’s, allergies, asthma – you know, the big chronic disorders that plague the people who live around them, namely the rest of us. Not to mention -- not ever -- the lack of autism.

Autism aside, the medical and media establishments still manage to evade the logical implications – something is protecting the overall health of this insular community whose rejection of many contemporary norms is legendary. You would think they would want to find out what that something is and try to clone it, stat, especially as the same disorders and diseases hit epidemic rates outside the Amish world and these same “experts” express complete bafflement about what’s going on.

A letter to the editor of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, dated March 16, 2012 AMISH CRADLEand published in the most recent edition online, is the latest to make this point. The six authors, scientists from Indiana, Germany, and Switzerland, state: “The prevalence of allergic sensitization has increased in most developed counties over the past century. In the United States, the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found 54.3% of the study population to have evidence of allergic sensitization.”

But not so among the 25,000 Amish in Indiana, who “live primarily an agrarian lifestyle. Many families live on working farms. All Amish families have horses that are used for transportation. A significant percentage drinks raw milk. They do not use electricity in their homes. They have large families.”

And they have very little allergy – among children ages 6 to 12 years, the percentage showing evidence of allergic sensitization was a mere 7.2 percent. This was far lower than two comparison groups; children in Switzerland who lived on farms had a still-low 25.2 percent, and Swiss non-farm children 44.2 percent, approaching international averages.

What gives? Well, “although we have not determined specific mechanisms, this study continues to support the effect of early farm exposures and their impact in significantly reducing the prevalence of asthma and allergic sensitization.” Those “exposures” might include raw milk, lots of siblings and farm animals – the usual constituents of the hygiene hypothesis that posits rolling around in lots of germs will keep you from getting allergies.

Well, maybe. Raw milk is a controversial issue right now, with the feds fighting it and lots of natural-health folks believing it is much healthier. But c’mon, people! What about non-exposures, like non-exposure to the full-throttle 2012 CDC-recommended, state-mandated vaccination schedule starting with mercury-containing flu shots in utero and Hep B at birth. What percentage of these Amish were non-exposed to that schedule compared to the average suburban family?

And we already know that vaccines can trigger asthma, the king of allergies. As my colleague Mark Blaxill has reported, “If you look at the totality of the published evidence the picture is admittedly somewhat mixed, but for anyone with an open mind and a critical eye, the argument for a strong role for vaccines as a cause of asthma is persuasive.” Even delaying the DPT shot by a couple of months cuts the rate of asthma by more than double.

I’m not sure we’ll find out from these authors, whose stated conflicts include consulting for Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, ProtectImmun and InfectoPharm. (InfectoPharm? You cannot be serious. Sounds like the villain in a dystopian novel a friend of mine is writing.)

We get this all the time. Astonishing health outcomes in the Amish are trumpeted, with pretty feeble efforts to figure out why. In 2008, I interviewed Margaret Pericak-Vance, an autism gene researcher, who has also studied dementia in an Amish group and reported in a 1996 study that it is less common than in the outside Caucasian population. As I reported then: “She found they also have a lower incidence of a gene called APO-E4. That gene is associated with Alzheimer's disease; in fact, ‘it's the one risk factor that's been confirmed in thousands of studies worldwide,’ Pericak-Vance said. Her deduction: Because the Amish she studied have less APO-E4, they have a lower incidence of dementia; her findings have been ‘just recently confirmed in some updated data we have with the Amish population.’"

OK, so now we have genes, lots of siblings, maybe raw milk, hanging around farm animals as possible factors in less allergy and Alzheimer’s in the Amish. Put a cow in your living room and some Amish genes in your DNA and some raw milk in your Sanka and all manner of things shall be well.

Or maybe not. There’s still that pesky autism problem. You would think, given how easy it was for mainstream researchers to establish the rate of allergy and Alzheimer’s among the Amish – low, very low – we could at least figure out what the autism rate is. A ballpark figure? An order of magnitude?

Nope. It’s all so very, very complicated. (Just ask Julie Gerberding.) Skeptic-style bloggers with no expertise and lots of faux gravitas have tried to establish that there is beaucoup de l’autisme avec les Amish. One such attempt blew up rather badly because the doctor quoted, at the Clinic for Special Children in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said the only cases he had seen were in children who were born with frank genetic disorders. That is not the kind of autism currently causing a thoroughly justified national panic – the “idiopathic” autism, as this doctor put it, that occurs in children with no known vulnerabilities. (And the Clinic specializes in vaccinating the bejesus out of genetically vulnerable children. The only case of "idiopathic autism" I found among the Amish was taken from her home by child services and vaccinated by the clinic. She returned home fully autistic. See her photo in our book. Draw your own conclusions.)

There was a fragment of a part of an ongoing study presented at IMFAR a couple of years ago in Philadelphia – I took the train over there to see for myself – that at least so far is pretty thin gruel for the you-betcha-the-Amish-are-loaded-up-with-Autism crowd. Of nine cases identified so far, three were from the same family and all had dysmorphic features similar to the father's that, the researchers acknowledged to me, suggested a genetic problem (not infrequent among the Amish due to their closed gene pool). A health professional I brought over to look at the poster presentation thought this family had signs of something called Menkes disease, an X-linked neurodegenerative disorder of impaired copper transport. Not too idiopathic in my book. (And a noted autism researcher told me he believes he has encountered this family at a conference, and that the mother reported all three regressed after the MMR. Two unvaccinated children were not affected.)

I wanted to interview the main author at IMFAR, who was standing with the poster of the fragment of the part of the ongoing study, but when I pulled out my tape recorder he demurred. The study wasn’t ready (although already widely cited). And vaccines? Anything about vaccines? They were going to get to that as part of the final report, he said.

Meanwhile even the most adamant vaccine defenders can’t get away from the glaring lack of full-syndrome, idiopathic, whatever-you-want to call it autism of the kind that’s ripping childhood apart in the rest of the country.

Max Wiznitzer (you can practically hear the hisses from AOA readers oozing out of your laptop) is Wiznitzer a prime witness. Wiznitzer, of University Hospitals in Cleveland, was an expert witness for the government against the families who filed in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

But on CNN’s Larry King in 2009, Wiznitzer said the rate of autism in northeastern Ohio, the nation’s largest Amish community, was 1 in 10,000. He should know, he said: “I’m their neurologist.” Dr. Wiznitzer also said those Amish were vaccinated.

Back in 2005, I reported on a doctor with even closer connections to the Amish community who said the autism rate was very low: Of 15,000 Amish who live near Middlefield, Dr. Heng Wang was aware of just one who has autism. Wang was the medical director, and a physician and researcher, at the DDC Clinic for Special Needs Children, created specifically to treat the Amish in northeastern Ohio.

“I take care of all the children with special needs,” he said, putting him in a unique position to observe autism. The one case Wang had identified is a 12-year-old boy.

But unlike Wiznitzer – and four years earlier -- he said half the children in the area were vaccinated, half were not. The child with autism, he said, was vaccinated.

I first raised this issue -- fewer vaccine, less autism -- seven years ago this spring, when I wrote an article titled The Amish Anomaly that began, “Where are the autistic Amish? Here in Lancaster County, heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, there should be well over 100 with some form of the disorder.

“I have come here to find them, but so far my mission has failed, and the very few I have identified raise some very interesting questions about some widely held views on autism.”

With the new allergy report and its implication for the low rate of autoimmune diseases among the Amish, aren't we right back where we started? As Al Neuharth would say: “Finally!”

--

Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.

The claims made by Olmsted in his earlier article, namely that Amish seldom vaccinate their children, and that they have almost no 'idiopathic' autism (as opposed to autism as a symptom as a genetic disorder) are debunked in this article, which points out that Amish do vaccinate, albeit at a lower rate than the mainstream, and that while there are few reported cases of idiopathic autism, this may be as much because they are managed within the community as because the actual rate is lower.

The thing that annoys me about this is that Olmsted seems to have decided on his conclusion first and then selected the evidence that suits it. Even if he was correct in claiming that almost no Amish vaccinated their children and that they had almost no idiopathic autism, the Amish way of life is so different from the mainstream that a lack of vaccinations is far from the most obvious factor. Frequent contact with animals such as horses and a lack of exposure to television could just as easily help to reduce the number of cases of autism, or mitigate the effects in those who are sufferers.

[Broomstick]

The much tighter community bonds, and the different quantity/quality of social interactions among the Amish vs. the "English", might also mitigate some of the symptoms of autism. There's no TV, DVD's, radio, much fewer distractions in a society where bonds between people are paramount. Ill and disabled members are given very focused attention. This may force children on the autistic spectrum to form coping mechanisms and strategies for interpersonal interactions and communications in a way such children in the mainstream society don't. The Amish certainly do have their share of mental illness and "odd" people, nonetheless, the community does try to integrate them into community life.

It may be that the rate of autism sufferers in Amishland is the same as with outsiders, but the way the Amish treat/deal with such people might result in different outcomes. I don't have any proof of that, I'm merely offering it as yet another potential reason there are so few overt examples of autistic people among the Amish.