The Amish community in the US has long been famous for shunning modern technology and preserving traditional ways of life, using horses for farming and for transport.
Now it appears that their closer contact with animals could have an unexpected benefit – preventing asthma in children.
A new study from the US compared the Amish with a similar community, the Hutterites, who use more modern farming methods.
Both groups have similar genetic ancestry and follow similar diets, but researchers found that childhood asthma rates differed strongly.
About 5% of Amish schoolchildren tested in the study had asthma compared with 21.3% of the Hutterite children.
The study in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that children’s immune systems in the Amish community were being bolstered by house dust that contained more microbes from farm animals.