Conflicts of Interest:
JO’BH is a board member of Clemens Von Pirquet Foundation. No other conflicts declared.
To the Editor,
The CORAL Birth cohort is a unique birth cohort project examining allergic and autoimmune dysregulation in infants born between March and May 2020, during the first SARS-CoV-2 lockdown in Ireland. We hypothesised that the dramatic social and environmental changes imposed by the pandemic-mandated lockdown would have implications on the incidence of allergic conditions, possibly mediated by changes in microbiome diversity. We report here interim data of health outcomes, including allergic conditions, at 12 months in this cohort.
We have previously published health outcome data at 6 months. A total of 365 infants were enrolled and 344 were retained to 12 months. Allergic outcomes in the CORAL cohort were compared with a national pre-pandemic birth cohort from the BASELINE study. The 12-month appointment involved s, skin prick testing (SPT), assessment of any atopic dermatitis (AD), lateral flow SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing and stool and blood sample for analysis.