This Week In Wellness a study from Johns Hopkins Medicine suggests that kids exposed to dogs prior to the age of 12 were significantly less likely (as much as 24%) to develop schizophrenia later in life.

Robert Yolken, M.D., chair of the Stanley Division of Pediatric Neurovirology and professor of neurovirology in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, and lead author of the paper says that “Serious psychiatric disorders have been associated with alterations in the immune system linked to environmental exposures in early life, and since household pets are often among the first things with which children have close contact, it was logical for us to explore the possibilities of a connection between the two,”. “There are several plausible explanations for this possible ‘protective’ effect from contact with dogs — perhaps something in the canine microbiome that gets passed to humans and bolsters the immune system against or subdues a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia,”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191218153448.htm

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225320