Diet during Pregnancy and Allergy Onset in the Childhood: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis

The number of allergic diseases in children becomes more prevalent nowadays. Maternal diet, especially during pregnancy, is widely known can program offspring’s allergy. Our objective is to study the relationship between maternal diet during pregnancy and childhood’s allergy onset in human. We systematically search two databases (SCOPUS and PubMed). The evidence was critically appraised using Newcastle Ottawa Scale (NOS) for case-control and cohort studies and Revised Cochrane risk of bias for cluster randomized trials (RoB2) tool for RCTs. We identified 41 papers, consisting of 37 prospective cohort studies, 1 case-control, and 3 RCTs. Meta-analyses suggest that maternal egg intake during pregnancy has a protective role on childhood eczema (OR:0.51; 95%CI: 0.32, 0.80) and food allergy (OR:0.60, 95% CI:0.38, 0.96), and vitamin D has a negative association with childhood rhinitis (OR: 0.86; 95% CI: 0.76, 0.97). Our meta-analyses do not support any association between maternal vitamin D intake on childhood asthma and fish oil supplementation on childhood hay fever and asthma. In conclusion, particular diet in pregnant woman may have positive roles for prevention of eczema, food allergy, and rhinitis among the offspring. Future RCTs are warranted to investigate the effect of other particular pregnancy diet on the outcome of children allergy.