Nobel Prize winner leads allergy research

A West Australian Nobel Prize winner is leading research to find out whether the bacterium that made him famous can prevent allergies in children.

Professor Barry Marshall and colleague Robin Warren won the prize in 2005 for proving the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, rather than stress, caused stomach ulcers.

Scientists will now examine whether it can regulate and balance the immune system in the gut, preventing eczema and more serious allergic disease in children from becoming life-long ailments.

Over the past decade, there has been a 10-fold increase in referrals for food allergies in Australia - and it's linked to increasingly cleaner environments and reduced exposure to micro-organisms in childhood.

"Less than five per cent of children in Western countries have the Helicobacter pylori bacteria in their stomach, indicating that microbes beneficial for immune system development may have become less common in modern societies," said Professor Susan Prescott, who is providing paediatric allergy expertise to the study.

Healthy adults will take part in the first phase of the Professor Marshall-led research, taking an oral dose of killed Helicobacter pylori so there's no risk of associated disease - namely ulcers and cancer.

Studies in children are planned for the future.

The study has been funded by a near-$1 million grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council to Perth's Telethon Institute for Child Health Research.