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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Mar 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2011 Jan 31;127(3):576–586. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2010.12.1116

Figure 1. Immunity, not tolerance, occurs after allergen exposure in early life.

Figure 1

Neonatal mouse pups were exposed to ovalbumin (OVA) via intra-amniotic injection 24–36 hours prior to birth or fed OVA (1 mg/gram body weight) or saline at day 1, 3, 7, 14, or 42. When rechallenged, animals exposed to OVA prior to the seventh day of life did not develop tolerance but instead robust humoral and cell-mediated immune responses, which persisted up to 14 weeks. Although it had long been known that tolerance was the default response to oral antigen administration in adult mice, these experiments demonstrated that oral exposure in early life could result in active immunologic priming rather than suppression.