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Allergies, Insecticides
and probiotics: How
can they affect us?
BIO 1
Kaleb Thom
/2014

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People may never wonder that the everyday food we eat can impact us greatly in many
ways. I'm not just talking about the diet and the benefits of eating healthy, but instead how
allergies affect us, how insecticides affect crops, and the potential positive effect of probiotics
can have upon humans. These topics are not usually surfaced upon eating a food as we usually
look towards the aesthetics or succulence of what we eat. Allergies have become increasing
prevalent amongst children as any food is a potential allergen, more than 90 percent of systemic
reactions to food in children are from eggs, milk, soy, wheat, or peanuts, and in adults are from
crustaceans, tree nuts, peanuts, or fish (Allergies 2008). As for insecticides it can cause potential
higher risk and effects upon people eating it, as producers rely on insecticides to help with their
crops, in supplying America's insatiable agricultural needs, thus ignoring the added risk resulting
from exposures and associated mixture toxicity from the usage of insecticides (Solecki et al.
2014). For the last topic probiotics, have been shown to relieve symptoms of lactose intolerance
and providing better digestion for food moving through the gut and potentially other beneficial
effects that are being studied on now.
Probiotics although are bacteria have been heard to be malicious towards people such as
Clostridia and Streptococci which can cause infections and meningitis among people. However,
there are good bacteria and are essential to your body functions such as probiotics. The two
common forms of probiotics that are found are Lactobacillus or Bifidobacterium and are known
to be important to people's health and can potentially prevent many diseases (Hempel et al.
2012). They tested the probiotics to see what effects they have and Lactobacillus was shown to
utilize lactose and produce lactic acid, as a metabolic byproduct. To conduct the test, however,
they would use pigs to see if the probiotic lactobacillus produced lactic acid and it did through

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the test. They gave the pigs some of the probiotics to see if it would produce the lactic acid,
however some of the probiotics were destroyed by the stomach but parts of it still produce lactic
acid as they found from the pigs gut. From this study researchers are conducting more research
on the potential of what probiotics can do. Another important fact that links allergies to
probiotics are bacteria being picked up by the newborn in their mothers birth canal such as the
good bacteria are not transmitted when a Cesarean section is performed. Due to this studies been
shown to illustrate the reason why some infants born by Cesarean section have allergies, less
than optimal immune systems, and lower levels of gut microflora (Hempel et al. 2012). There are
endless possibilities to what probiotics can do as they can help anywhere from the immune
system, digestive health, and even allergies, but many are being studied still to show what
probiotics can do for the human health.
Equally important and related to probiotics are allergies, as they affect millions of people
each year caused from all types of sources such as pets, foods, plants, and pollen. Allergies
happen to people as their immune system develops antibodies against an allergen, disregarding if
it's harmful or not, causing an allergic reaction. In this research, however, the authors are
researching the prevalence and the type of the reported symptoms that are caused by food
intolerance. The rise of allergies have increased as 220-250 millions of people suffer from it. It
also affects the quality of life, especially for children, as most allergies derive from pollen, with
food being another large factor. The test are done through epidemiological study which involves
15 countries by using methodology. Which after that the administer gives a detailed
questionnaire and includes a blood, lung function and skin pricks tests to common allergens that
provoke allergic reactions (Woods et al. 2001). Through this research, they took randomly
selected adults who were in the European Community Respiratory Health Survey, ranging from

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ages 20 to 44, to conduct the test. Interestingly enough, the results showed many different
variations on how allergies affected different groups, including different countries. They found
that food allergies within the respondents ranges anywhere from 4.6% to 19.1% and that Atopic
females were much more prone to have food allergies (Woods et al. 2001). From this data they
also found food allergies to be significantly diverse within different countries such as participants
from Scandinavia or Germany were found to be more likely to have food allergies then the
participants from Spain. The data collected told many things that could be a potential cause for
food allergies, as cultural differences played a role in how the population had a higher chance of
food allergies. This could relate to multiple factors such as weather, types of food, and could
even be genetic. Even though we know the causes of allergies, this data helps support that there
are more to allergies than the allergens itself which in this case, food. If cultural roots have a
factor to play in deciding on whether there are more or less likely to have a food allergy, it can be
an important role on how antibodies react differently as whole from culture to culture. However,
in this research the differences were not studied upon but only the self-reported food allergies as
there could be other possibilities on what factors in the causes of allergies.
Furthermore, the use of pesticides in society have become much more prevalent in
modern agriculture with the advance of technology. Insecticides are used primarily to kill or
control unwanted insects as well as the use fungicide on fungi and herbicides on weeds to
increase the amount of crops yielded. Nowadays pesticides can create crops in unfavorable
climate, have longer growing seasons, and even maintain the life of the crops with the help of
chemicals. However, even with its benefits, the use of pesticides can create pesticides resistant
insects and health risks when use too frequently or reprehensively. Health risks can include the
affecting of the nervous and endocrine system, skin irritation, and carcinogens which can be

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found from all types of insecticides. In this research, the authors are trying to investigate the use
of flubendiamide which is a novel class of insecticides with a unique chemical structure. The
structure of the three chemicals come from three parts with the heptafluroisopropyl group, novel
substituent and the sulfonylalkyl group which shows strong insecticidal activity (Tohnishi et al.
2005). Even though the insecticide flubendiamide are effective against most insects, it shows the
strongest towards the lepidopterous pest and even those with resistant strains. The research aims
towards a search for an insecticide effective against the lepidopterous pest which includes
caterpillars, diamond back moths, and white butterflies, regarding the insecticide selectivity to
only insects. To confirm the chemical structure of the insecticide flubendiamide the chemical
structures were confirmed by a spectrometer, the melting point, and prepared through the 3nitrophthalic acids. Then after doing so the insecticide were tested upon insects and found that it
had weak insecticidal activity, but found it very effect against lepidopterous. The investigation
found out that the insecticides was intended to be used to for all insects, but instead they found
out it had a huge effect on the lepidopterous pest as they changed the nitro groups to other
groups, they found that the insecticides were best with chloro derivatives. The lepidopterous
insects were affect through their larvae as it caused a contraction of the insect body rather than
conventional insecticides which goes toward the nervous system and the metamorphosis stage of
the insects. Due to this discovery of the insecticide flubendiamide it showed a different course
action that it took than other insecticides preventing, already insecticide resistant insects to be
affected by this chemical. However, as effective as the flubendiamide can be it can possibly
cause the lepidopterous insects to become resistant with this insecticide over time with natural
selection. The researchers although they come up with another type of insecticide flubendiamide
that can be very effective against insects especially the lepidopterous group. It creating new

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opportunities for the farmers to use another type of insecticides to prevent the already resistant
insects, until the possible effects of natural selection occurs creating insecticide resistant insects
to this type of insecticide.
As a result from the effects allergies, insecticides, and probiotics they can all impact
people lives in many way. The effects of allergies are caused by allergens causing the immune
system to have a reaction, even though some can be harmless. However, as found from the
research data shows that allergies could indeed be different from region to region and not from
the population as a whole, as shown Spain had a significantly lower percentage in the amount of
food allergies compared to Germany. Due to this, allergies could be affected through cultural
backgrounds, as well as genetics being a factor that was not studied in the research. In probiotics,
good bacteria could have a large effect on a person's digestive system and if a baby is delivered
by caesarean, good bacteria might not have transferred causing allergies. Lastly the use of
insecticides can greatly increase the amount of crops being grown, but can also add health risk
and the development of insecticide resistant insects through natural selection. Even so, new
insecticides are being created to have different effects and counteract some of the resistant
insects. The research created a profound view of the extensive research each of these topics
require and a different perspective on how researching work as a whole, creating an opportunity
to explore the importance of allergies, probiotics, and insecticides.

Literature cited
Allergies, F. (2008) Food allergies: detection and management

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*Hempel, S., Newberry N. S., Maher, A. R., Wang, Z., Miles, J. N., Shanman, R., Johnsen, B.,
and Shekelle, P. G. (2012) Probiotics for the Prevention and Treatment of AntibioticAssociated Diarrhea. The Journal of the American Medical Association 18:1959-1969.
Solecki, R., Stein, B., Frische, T., Matezki, S., Wogram, J., and Streloke, M. (2014) Paradigm
shift in the rist assessment of cumulative effects of pesticide mixtures and multiple
residues to humans and wildlife: German proposal for a new approach. Journal fr
Verbraucherschutz und Lebensmittelsicherheit 14:1-3.
*Tohnishi, M., Nakao, H., Furuya, T., Seo, A., Kodama, H., Tsubata, K., and Nishimatsu, T.
(2005) Flubendiamide, a novel insecticide highly active against lepidopterous insect
pests. Journal of Pesticide Science, 30:354-360.
*Woods, R. K., Abramson, M., Bailey, M., and Walters, E. H. (2001) International prevalences of
reported food allergies and intolerances. Comparisons arising from the European
Community Respiratory Health Survey (ECRHS) 1991-1994. European journal of
clinical nutrition, 54: 298-304.